Challenge

The adidas NMD shoe line was designed for the Urban Nomad—creators who are always on the go, empowered and inspired by urban environments.

For the launch of the 3rd generation, adidas needed a digital campaign that would match the speed of this target’s transient lifestyle.

Forever Developing is an integrated campaign taking place exclusively on Instagram, marrying film photography techniques with a mobile mindset.

Solution

In a docu-style content series, Firstborn followed two film photographers as they curated a collection of the tools they use to create—centered around a pair of NMDs. Each photographer’s narrative was broken into 5 chapters, released on Instagram Stories. A simple swipe up lead users to an interactive editorial that took them deeper into the narrative, the creative tools and the art of film photography.

To close out each story, Firstborn encouraged people to take a photo inside a custom 360° Google Street View experience and upload it to their own accounts for a chance to win our photographer’s collections.

To bookend the digital experience Firstborn invited fans to move from behind the lens to inside of it with installations of the world’s oldest camera: the Camera Obscura. The functional camera developed unique photos from the event and doubled as an event space to showcase the influencers’ collections.

Result

Firstborn created a mobile-first campaign that increased awareness for the NMD launch and drove engagement with adidas’ core audience resulting in over 10MM earned impressions in the first 48 hours, 7.1M video views and over 2,000 event attendees.

The shoe sold out in its first two weeks and the campaign was so successful that adidas asked Firstborn to extend the creative from the original B2C audience to their B2B audience of retail partners.

Firstborn created two additional docu-series featuring new micro-influencers from Chicago and NYC, catered specifically for Champs and its social channels to promote the NMD launch in-store.