And somehow, we did it.

Shameless self promotion? Perhaps! But this being most likely my final campaign here, a lot of thoughts I want to share.

A lot of people ask me what I do.

Some taxi drivers think PR = PG (Promotion Girls), others think PR = Escort.

Hmmm not exactly...

I really believe that this brand's marketing department is highly driven by PR. Our team works the longest hours, we have the least budget in marketing, but we create the highest ROI.

Every single aspect of the venue decoration is carefully calculated, so that no matter where the media is shooting from, the adidas logo/adidas 3-stripes is always in the shot. Even the bench Billups sat on to change his shoes had crazy branding. There is absolutely no way the media can void adidas brand presence if they want to get a clear shot of Mr. Big Shot. :) Sneaky? Sly? Yes. We dont't care if the NCC fines the TV stations for embedded advertisement in news programs, as long as we are seen.

This event was held on a freaking Wednesday morning at 10am. Work day. School day. The absolute worst timing for a public event. Went through hell and back worried about an empty gymnasium with no fans, then worried about it being too packed, then back to being worried about no shows. Prior to event, we put in a lot of work getting the news out there without using any traditional media (we only had 10 days to announce this event, since Billups' schedule was unconfirmed, no time to go the traditional route). Made use of non-traditional media like basketball forums, BBS, PTT to get the crowd here, to make sure Billups doesn't feel like shit. Ahhhh... the magic of the internet.

When my agency reported that 16 TV stations came, I was like, 'wtf... I didn't even know Taiwan had more than 10 media that would report on an event like this'.

We leveraged the NBA craze from the Taipei Game to launch the TS Cut Creator (hence why we made the gigantic shoe), to claim our territory in the basketball category, to tell our target audience that adidas is an authentic basketball brand. We had the ultimate weapon - the NBA - as the platform to propel the brand and we thoroughly took advantage of it, with almost zero negative feedback from consumers and media.

I really don't think the pictures do this event justice. So here are 2 of the 19 TV exposures:

In the 2nd one, you see the only major flaw in this event. The giant shoe was supposed to descend from the ceiling, together with the Mission Impossible-esque guys. During final rehearsal, 1 of the 4 motors burnt out. My vendor went out looking for a replacement cord. I was panicking... the media was already starting to arrive and camera crews were setting up. Even if the replacement cord came and got replaced, we couldn't be 100% sure that it would descend OK. There was absolutely no time for a run-through. We had to settle for the worst case scenario = have it rolled out and unveiled manually, which looked like shiat.

But, its better to have it awkwardly rolled out than to risk having it stuck in the air. Better safe than sorry. No one knows though, that it wasn't supposed to be like this. But we know, and we don't like.

Could have done a way more elaborate event... but given the tiny budget, it's not 100% perfect, but we got what we wanted to achieve - linkage to the NBA, launch shoes, launch new slogan. Bankai.

PR is a lot more than doing events though. Just one single event won't make a brand's sales boost significantly. It's the constant media communication. It's being reactive & knowing what your target audience wants, and packaging the brand/products into a form that they will accept, and hopefully agree with, which MAY turn into a purchase on the other end.

After all, our campaign products did not sell out after the event. It sold out before the event happened, thanks to the wonderful early phases of the campaign where we power-blasted our brand & products.

Report finished.

The end.