NEW!Cases | ECOMMERCEJan. 11, 2023

Adidas x Zalando – Retro World

Zalando and Adidas created awareness and traffic through an interactive in-banner game

Background

Adidas is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe and one of the world’s most recognisable brands. The legendary three stripes are an iconic, instant brand identifier. Zalando is one of Europe’s largest retailers with a broad catalog of shoes, fashion and beauty products. Active in 25 markets, Zalando is the go-to shopping destination for more than 50 million Europeans. A key factor in Zalando’s success is their partnerships with brands, such as Adidas. The collaborations are vital in allowing customers to interact with brands through Zalando’s platform.

OBJECTIVE

Zalando Marketing Services approached Cavai when looking at digital advertising options for Adidas’ new retro-inspired collection, ‘Retro World’ launch on Zalando. Zalando wanted something highly creative and engaging, and were keen on replicating the 80’s and 90’s nostalgia feel of the Retro World subsite. The site takes inspiration from video games that were popular at the time, such as Space Invaders and Snake. At the time of the campaign, traffic to the Zalando site had been declining. They wanted to create a ‘thought starter’ creative execution that not only increased awareness and consideration of Retro World, but also drove quality traffic to the site and increased incremental purchases.

SOLUTION

Our solution was not just to be inspired by retro games, but actually emulating them. Cavai created a game where the audience would have a shoe jump over a shoebox. The look of the game drew heavily on the classic 2D arcade games of the 80’s and 90’s Reusing the visual elements from the website, the ad had a unique, recognizable visual feel. Try the creative here! For this campaign, we partnered with Lumen, the leading attention technology company, that utilizes eye-tracking to measure attention in digital campaigns.

RESULTS

The campaign went live in July 2022, totaling 11 million impressions.
The ad garnered two times higher attention than Lumen benchmark: The average time spent dwelling on the ad was 2.5 seconds, 32% greater than the norm in Lumen’s database.
- For those of you who are into attention metrics; Per 1000 impressions, the ad generated 2449 seconds of attention. This is 2x higher than the Lumen benchmark!
From there, an amazing 61 000 games were started. This amounts to a started gameplay rate of 0.75%, almost 7 times the benchmark for interactive ads
We didn't just get people to interact with the ad itself, we also achieved a CTR of 0.51%, which yielded 57 000 clicks through to the landing page.

RESULTS

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average dwell time

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Testimonial

Drag

Timothy ThompsonBrand Activation Manager, Adidas

When you don’t realize it’s an ad rather than a game while finding yourself completing “the full funnel”, the brand definitely did it right! The Retroworld banner cut the sea of white noise, sparking real engagement and users’ feedback with data to prove it. Next level unlocked.