Adidas Too Busy Virtue-Signalling About SJW Issues To Notice One Of The Best Ads Ever

[aSimpNamedBrokeback]

Your argument is basically, "The ad has old people and it can't be a good ad because old people rarely buy Adidas."
.

No, it's "it has old people, I'm not trying to rock shoes that are marketed to my grandma".

 

[la bodhisattva]

TOO MUCH POSTURING.

This is your 18th post?

You're not going to last long around here.

There are three posters in this thread who likely won't make it to 50 posts.

 

[Delta]

Another reason Adidas may not have wanted to use this ad is its length. Your standard commercial is 30 seconds long; I doubt they budget for, or have any desire to pay the cost of airing one that's 99 seconds.

Either way it's a massive stretch to try and relate this to the two stories linked in the original post.

 

[Wahawahwah]

I really liked the advert ; Also a lot of these big sports brands go in for "aspirational" marketing - the advert is a good example of aspirational material since it shows how an old man breaks free of his shackles and goes on to do what he loves.. and therefore is very relevant to the young demographic even though it features old people.

That being said, we have no idea how many such adverts Adidas gets sent by people, and whether they even have dedicated personnel to look at such submissions. Just because an advert is good doesn't mean that an organization is morally/ethically bound to buy it, I don't get why people are hating on Adidas. Sure its a very good ad and has generated decent buzz on social media, but hindsight is always 20/20. Most people in Adidas probably don't even have creative control over big advertising, perhaps the leadership outsources advertising to a third party advertising firm. The kid could've sent it to Nike, or Reebok, or UnderArmor or any other relevant competitor as well (I personally think the style and message is more fitting of Nike's adverts). Hopefully the guy is able to parlay all of this attention into a successful career, but shaming an organization for certain business decisions, while understandable on his part, is not a sentiment I support.

 

[david.garrett84]

...but shaming an organization for certain business decisions, while understandable on his part, is not a sentiment I support.

I understand you to a degree. Yes, hindsight is always hindsight.

Yet after the LGBT and other SJW madness Adidas has spouted in recent times, they should be shamed. They have clearly spent too much time appeasing SJW interest groups. No surprise that they missed this guy.

 

[Atlanta Man]

I liked that commercial.

 

[Goldin Boy]

RE: Adidas Cares About Sales Not Feel-Good Ads

Let's address these points:

Oh, for fuck's sake. A shitty ad?! One that makes news around the world, despite not even being used by its corporate recipient?

Yes that's correct it's a shitty ad. Don't confuse popularity with profitability.

Adidas wants ads that sell. What's the point of people talking about it if the target demo is not going into the store and buying?

Coroporation exist to make money, not start conversations.

Guys, stop bandying around the term "target market" as if you really know what it means and how it works.

I do know what it means. I've been writing direct response copy since 2013. Beyond Borders has some good info about it in the Lifestyle subforum.

I've heard of armchair pua's but this is the first time I've seen an armchair marketer. Have you ever written a USP in your life?

Not every product is for everybody. If the shoes are for young people, they should've communicated that some way in the video. That's where it fails.

Your argument is basically, "The ad has old people and it can't be a good ad because old people rarely buy Adidas." Meanwhile, this guy will get 20 million views of his "bad" ad, that didn't even become an official ad, by the end of 2017.

Yes, that's correct.

How many of those millions of YouTube views translate into pairs of shoes sold?

How do you quantify re-tweets as revenue? That's what Adidas' shareholders care about (the thing that you don't seem understand). The company can't translate this video's viral status into sales and/or tangible proof that it's existence has a positive influence on units sold.

There's no virtue-signaling, it's all in your head. If Adidas were, they would issued a statement saying they rejected the ad but they didn't: We only know it was rejected because the video uploader said so.

The student filmmaker's own upload has already gotten 5 million views (yes, for a SPEC AD) in basically three or four days. It was posted mid-December but took off after the New Year.

5 million? So what? Britney Spears has sold about 100 million albums of cookie-cutter, vacuous pop songs. Does that sheer volume of records sold, that she didn't write, produce or arrange, make her a good musician?

Again, popularity doesn't equal profitability. What is the benefit to owning Adidas shoes for a young person based on this video? It was mostly seen by young people. Who said: "It's a good video" and then they watched 2 hours of cat videos without buying anything.

There are none. It's a video about an old man recapturing his glory. Good story, shitty ad with a nebulous target market(young Millennials while it only depicts geezers in a geriatric center?).

The massive publicity this video piece has gotten is entirely demonstrative of why Adidas should have chosen it.

The vast majority of people talking about it are young people, Adidas' meta-market.

You're falling for the psychological phenomenon called "social proof" and you don't even realize it. More people voted for The Cunt aka Hillary than Trump. Do they know something we don't? Hell no!

Thousands of millennial were "talking" about Occupy Wallstreet yet they accomplished nothing.

Re-tweeting, fb liking and commenting are low-commitment activities that don't translate into your going into a store or logging onto the Adidas site and making a purchase. Adidas gets that. You don't.

I don't see the world through this "everyone is either alt-right or SJW" dichotomy as you seem to.

The only color Adidas sees is green. There isn't any agenda/conspiracy behind this rejection. The director has talent but this should've been a short film, not an ad.
[/quote]

 

[david.garrett84]

Yes that's correct it's a shitty ad. Don't confuse popularity with profitability.

Adidas wants ads that sell. What's the point of people talking about it if the target demo is not going into the store and buying?

Coroporation exist to make money, not start conversations.

Right, and you've concluded it's a shitty ad how? In the last two days you've done what with what figures?

I'm talking shitty in terms of what you think it would not deliver for Adidas.

And again, it's a marked improvement on the other crap they have put out re SJW issues.

As for this ad, it has started a conversation. And conversations are the very essence of viral marketing.

I do know what it means. I've been writing direct response copy since 2013. Beyond Borders has some good info about it in the Lifestyle subforum.

I've heard of armchair pua's but this is the first time I've seen an armchair marketer. Have you ever written a USP in your life?

Not every product is for everybody. If the shoes are for young people, they should've communicated that some way in the video. That's where it fails.

Yes, I have written USPs. And yes I did study marketing as part of my psychology degree. For those others reading this, writing a USP is not a sophisticated task at all. Writing a truly good USP is.

You asked the question about me writing USPs, so I answered, but the whole "what are your credentials?" trope is not necessary. Convince me and others with the quality of your argument, not claims you make about your qualifications or work experience.

Yes, that's correct.

How many of those millions of YouTube views translate into pairs of shoes sold?

How do you quantify re-tweets as revenue? That's what Adidas' shareholders care about (the thing that you don't seem understand). The company can't translate this video's viral status into sales and/or tangible proof that it's existence has a positive influence on units sold.

Considering the huge number of young people discussing this (yes, discussing an ad about old people), it will translate into pairs of shoes sold. It is a question of how many.

Adidas has already made money from this, as they haven't had to sacrifice a single penny on advertising and millions of people are talking about the company.

There's no virtue-signaling, it's all in your head. If Adidas were, they would issued a statement saying they rejected the ad but they didn't: We only know it was rejected because the video uploader said so.

I said the virtue-signalling was about the LGBT and Indian mascot bullshit.

 

[TSC2295]

Yes that's correct it's a shitty ad. Don't confuse popularity with profitability.

Adidas wants ads that sell. What's the point of people talking about it if the target demo is not going into the store and buying?

Coroporation exist to make money, not start conversations.

The only negative thing I could say about this ad is that I don't remember it for specifically advertising Adidas; whilst I enjoyed watching, it is the story that sticks out in my mind far more than the actual product that they would have been selling had they chosen to use it.

I don't believe it had anything to do with the fact that it was an old man in it.

 

[david.garrett84]

5 million? So what? Britney Spears has sold about 100 million albums of cookie-cutter, vacuous pop songs. Does that sheer volume of records sold, that she didn't write, produce or arrange, make her a good musician?

From a marketing perspective, it actually does make her a good musician. She and her team have marketed the "Britney Spears" brand extraordinarily well.

I find her music appalling personally, yet the marketing surrounding her has been spot on.

Again, popularity doesn't equal profitability. What is the benefit to owning Adidas shoes for a young person based on this video? It was mostly seen by young people. Who said: "It's a good video" and then they watched 2 hours of cat videos without buying anything.

There are none. It's a video about an old man recapturing his glory. Good story, shitty ad with a nebulous target market(young Millennials while it only depicts geezers in a geriatric center?).

If anything, the ad is a melodramatic (not to be confused with ineffective) take on millennial ideas like YOLO and "strive for something bigger".

Market segmentation and targeting involves demographics AND things like psychological profiles, which dovetail with demographics but are not wholly subsumed by them.

You are clearly put off by the presence of old people in the video. That's fine, but I don't understand your refusal to concede that an ad ostensibly featuring old people could have even greater appeal for youth.

So? Watching an ad is technically low-commitment. As I said, the intention of the filmmaker was viral marketing.

You're willing to dismiss this ad because it does not tick some boxes you find necessary and all the while millions of people are talking about it and the company it was meant for. That's a much better basis for assessing the impact of the ad on sales than "millennials these days will just watch cat videos and won't buy after seeing this".

You have nothing to base your "nothing will come of this" statement on.

You're falling for the psychological phenomenon called "social proof" and you don't even realize it. More people voted for The Cunt aka Hillary than Trump. Do they know something we don't? Hell no!

Thousands of millennial were "talking" about Occupy Wallstreet yet they accomplished nothing.

I think you have fallen for the social proof, specifically the social proof of Adidas.

You call it a "shitty" ad. But an ad getting millions of views is a much better indication of a potential positive impact on sales than what you have provided in this thread. You've just called it shitty and regurgitated your gripe that it doesn't conform to your overly sequential marketing steps. Meanwhile, as I keep saying, millions are talking about it and news website after website is talking about Adidas.

I don't see the world through this "everyone is either alt-right or SJW" dichotomy as you seem to.

Where did I say this? I actually said the corporations were cucked. Cucks are neither SJW nor alt-right, nor any of the many other competing ideologies out there.

What I did say was that, contrary to Ivan's "fucking retards" jibe, not everyone criticizing people like Adidas and their marketing/advertising choices is a white nationalist or even on the more vocal race end of the alt-right. Nor are they chasing gender boogeymen. The anti-white male and anti-male bias in advertising has been well documented.

 

[Kona]

I'd venture to say that Addidas probably has an advertising department back at headquarters.They probably have videos made to target specific markets by professional viral video types like Casey neistat or someone.

You can't just send them videos and say "what the hell you damn feminists" when they don't buy them, pay you, or even mail you some free samba classics.

That being said, professionals that make these viral videos are all about; he gimmicks.

This video may have been commissioned by them and now its all over the internet getting shared and racking up views. That's marketing nowadays. Addidas probably has the best people in the world on their payroll to do things like this.

But none the less, these damn feminists, screw them!

Aloha!

 

[Comte De St. Germain]

Let's address these points:

Oh, for fuck's sake. A shitty ad?! One that makes news around the world, despite not even being used by its corporate recipient?

Yes that's correct it's a shitty ad. Don't confuse popularity with profitability.

Adidas wants ads that sell. What's the point of people talking about it if the target demo is not going into the store and buying?

Coroporation exist to make money, not start conversations.

Guys, stop bandying around the term "target market" as if you really know what it means and how it works.

I do know what it means. I've been writing direct response copy since 2013. Beyond Borders has some good info about it in the Lifestyle subforum.

I've heard of armchair pua's but this is the first time I've seen an armchair marketer. Have you ever written a USP in your life?

Not every product is for everybody. If the shoes are for young people, they should've communicated that some way in the video. That's where it fails.

Your argument is basically, "The ad has old people and it can't be a good ad because old people rarely buy Adidas." Meanwhile, this guy will get 20 million views of his "bad" ad, that didn't even become an official ad, by the end of 2017.

Yes, that's correct.

How many of those millions of YouTube views translate into pairs of shoes sold?

How do you quantify re-tweets as revenue? That's what Adidas' shareholders care about (the thing that you don't seem understand). The company can't translate this video's viral status into sales and/or tangible proof that it's existence has a positive influence on units sold.

There's no virtue-signaling, it's all in your head. If Adidas were, they would issued a statement saying they rejected the ad but they didn't: We only know it was rejected because the video uploader said so.

The student filmmaker's own upload has already gotten 5 million views (yes, for a SPEC AD) in basically three or four days. It was posted mid-December but took off after the New Year.

5 million? So what? Britney Spears has sold about 100 million albums of cookie-cutter, vacuous pop songs. Does that sheer volume of records sold, that she didn't write, produce or arrange, make her a good musician?

Again, popularity doesn't equal profitability. What is the benefit to owning Adidas shoes for a young person based on this video? It was mostly seen by young people. Who said: "It's a good video" and then they watched 2 hours of cat videos without buying anything.

There are none. It's a video about an old man recapturing his glory. Good story, shitty ad with a nebulous target market(young Millennials while it only depicts geezers in a geriatric center?).

The massive publicity this video piece has gotten is entirely demonstrative of why Adidas should have chosen it.

The vast majority of people talking about it are young people, Adidas' meta-market.

You're falling for the psychological phenomenon called "social proof" and you don't even realize it. More people voted for The Cunt aka Hillary than Trump. Do they know something we don't? Hell no!

Thousands of millennial were "talking" about Occupy Wallstreet yet they accomplished nothing.

Re-tweeting, fb liking and commenting are low-commitment activities that don't translate into your going into a store or logging onto the Adidas site and making a purchase. Adidas gets that. You don't.

I don't see the world through this "everyone is either alt-right or SJW" dichotomy as you seem to.

The only color Adidas sees is green. There isn't any agenda/conspiracy behind this rejection. The director has talent but this should've been a short film, not an ad.

OTD:
He's completely on the money.


Wanna know why? If you've tried to promote anything and I mean anything. You realize that liking and retweeting and getting your name out there won't transfer into much on the ground. It's only going to promote effortless behavior aka free downloads or attention.

Plenty of my friends involved in music get their friends to share their shit and collectively that adds up to hundreds of likes, but very few actual listens or downloads for paid content. Instead they have to still aggressively market free content and hope that their song was good enough to be even downloaded for free.

This ad is all good feels and I more than happily love the message, but no it doesn't sell period for the same reason. It's not selling shoes it's selling its own message.

This may seem unpopular but the manosphere and the right is now falling for the same shit the SJWs are falling for. Easy, feel good clickbait. Just like the whole here's this strong independent woman doing great shit crap that they share and retweet on social media. This thread is a key example of this. There is no politicized agenda here on Addidas' part. If anything we're falling for a marketing ploy itself.

The guy who made the ad wants more customers so he wants to sell his work. And we're giving him revenue and attention which is good for him. So still feel free to share away if you want to support him.

 

[BortimusPrime]

Maybe they didn't think it was that great, I didn't. If he can run why is he locked up in a nursing home?

Well, the less-inspiring reality of the scenario was that the man most likely had Alzheimer's and the nursing staff was trying to keep him from wandering off and getting hurt.

 

[Going strong]

Maybe they didn't think it was that great, I didn't. If he can run why is he locked up in a nursing home?

Well, the less-inspiring reality of the scenario was that the man most likely had Alzheimer's and the nursing staff was trying to keep him from wandering off and getting hurt.

But then, one might still see the scenario as inspiring. I mean, somehow, if I were an old man with Alzheimer's, I'd prefer to do a last wild run into the sunset, never to be seen again (like the man in the video), rather than slowly die while locked up in a nursing home.

 

[Easy_C]

Ivan's got a point. Most advertising is targeted. Usually the person you see depicted in the advert, print or TV commercial, is whom the ad meant to attract and hopefully sell to(ad has Asian guy in it they're trying to sell to Asian Men)

Let's be serious, how many White Male Senior citizens are dying to be marathon runners? Adidas probably realized that while those Seniors may have lots of money, there aren't enough of them to justify the cost large-scale ad campaign.

It was a well-thought out, creative ad(he should make this into a short film). But ads aren't judged on their creativity. They're judged on their ability to sell; ads aren't art. This one's looking for a nearly non-existent target demographic so therefore it's a shitty ad.

That's it.

There's no globalist boogeyman targeting straight White Men stopping them from doing anything, OP. Adidas passed because they wouldn't get much money from it.

Alright, so how many actual Adidas customers were being targeted by the LGBT or anti-Indian mascot payments madness it has engaged in? Because leftist hipsters don't wear their gear. All this virtue-signalling I mentioned appeals to leftist whites, the people least likely to buy Adidas.

There is something woefully wrong when corporate media and advertising teams (particularly the people who head them and gain from new hits, regardless of where they come from), not to mention executives, think the LGBT and Indian mascot shit will sell their product, but ads like this are not even considered.

So, yes, these people live in a bubble and they are peddling politically correct codswallop on a regular basis.

I said the corporations were cucked, not conspiratorial. And they are cucked when it comes to showing ads about certain folks. They're too focused on pandering to the 3-4% of people who are gay/lesbian, the 0.5% who want to "change" their gender or supposedly have, the hipsters, and minorities (which really centers on what the corporations think are "minority issues", thus encompassing only a subsection of minority opinions). Saying this doesn't make me or anyone else criticizing either an ardent white nationalist or a member of the more racially extreme wing of the alt-right.

Ivan, as for your post, you're assuming that the target market matches only the people depicted in the advertisement - old people and middle-aged or nearing middle-aged medical staff. By that logic, any ad featuring a severely handicapped person won't resonate ever with the 98.5% of people who aren't severely handicapped. Half of the time, the kinds of people in the ad do not matter at all - the emotions do.

Whether you love or hate the ad, it's relatively deep. Reducing it to only being able to appeal to old folks in old folks' homes dreaming nostalgically of long-gone youth is rather ridiculous given the waves across many demographics it has made this week.

As for the "doing my job for free thing", that is not how marketing and advertising works for Nike at least. I can't comment on Adidas. The people who scout ideas or are responsible for administering creative teams have every incentive for picking a successful advertising campaign.

The other aspect of this is that marketers tend to over-analyze the problems that they're faced with or get so boxed into their frameworks/buzzwords that they lose common sense. I once had one of my peers (guy at a top-tier US business school that produces a LOT of CEOs) seriously argue that a sporting goods company needed to ignore it's core customer base(90%+ revenue in that demographic) and take an action that would massively piss them off because "that segment isn't growing!".

In this case the term "target audience" doesn't mean what he thinks it does. It doesn't necessarily refer to a niche segment or demographic. Some products have what you would call "broad based appeal" to where almost every person living can realize benefit from the product.

Shoes fall into this category. While certain types of shoes will definitely have their own niche, athletic shoes as a category don't need a specific target niche for the same reason that grocery stores don't need to target a specific niche. Everybody with two cents to rub together needs the product.

 

[Delta]

Shoes fall into this category. While certain types of shoes will definitely have their own niche, athletic shoes as a category don't need a specific target niche for the same reason that grocery stores don't need to target a specific niche. Everybody with two cents to rub together needs the product.

Are you really contending that elderly people who never partake in athletics need athletic shoes?

 

[BiggNastee]

Adidas sucks. Them missing an opportunity is nothing new

 

[Kona]

Well when I watched the video the first time I clicked errantly and watched a different video.

Adidas is definetly virtue signaling by ignoring that video.

Every company wants to be the brand of choice for old people with signs of dementia escaping from care homes.

Aloha!

 

[Easy_C]

Shoes fall into this category. While certain types of shoes will definitely have their own niche, athletic shoes as a category don't need a specific target niche for the same reason that grocery stores don't need to target a specific niche. Everybody with two cents to rub together needs the product.

Are you really contending that elderly people who never partake in athletics need athletic shoes?

An elderly person starring in the video doesn't make elderly people the target audience.

 

[Delta]

Shoes fall into this category. While certain types of shoes will definitely have their own niche, athletic shoes as a category don't need a specific target niche for the same reason that grocery stores don't need to target a specific niche. Everybody with two cents to rub together needs the product.

Are you really contending that elderly people who never partake in athletics need athletic shoes?

An elderly person starring in the video doesn't make elderly people the target audience.

Agreed, but that's not what you said earlier. You said everyone needs athletic shoes/there's no specific type of person to target when selling athletic shoes, which is false.