Adidas understands the rule of leverage and activation in sport sponsorship

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Adidas does tennis, golf, rugby, cricket, basketball and even European hockey. Its sister brand Reebok now gives it strong profile in North American football and hockey. But the German multinational has always been most defined by its roots in soccer.

It will bend to its competitors in other sports but in soccer, it is staunchly committed to never breaking against Nike, Nike-owned UMBRO and Puma.

That explains why Adidas will always do soccer "full out". It will never fall short when it comes to marketing soccer and its three stripes to the world. Adidas is not the world's largest soccer company -- and #2 shoe company across all sports -- by accident.

Its status as a multi-billion dollar brand has been finely-honed through a global marketing strategy featuring the full gamut of international, national and local deals across the full spectrum of advertising, television, internet, event and team sponsorships, personal endorsements, community investment and public relations.

There's no better example of that than Adidas' multilevel marketing around soccer at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

As a FIFA global partner, it has event exclusivity at the World Cup (and at the regional levels of UEFA, Conmebol, Concacaf, Africa and Asia). But it understands that event sponsorship typically delivers little more than signage and macro-level brand awareness. To make the most of its sponsorship investments, it gets that it needs to leverage its sponsorship with television and other advertising, engage customers through personal endorsements and activate by promoting and activating at the retail level.

The Star Wars-themed campaign, The Quest, is all about that: personally-leveraging its FIFA and World Cup sponsorships and activating sales on the strength of its personal endorsements. The Quest is about engaging fans through their personal connections with players such as Lionel Messi of Argentina, Kaka of Brazil, David Villa of Spain, Bastian Schweinsteiger of Germany and 18 other top internationals. Produced in association with George Lucas and Lucasfilm, its also about appealing to an audience outside of hard-core soccer, absolutely essential in building a brand and generating new sales.

What Adidas has invested in leveraging and activating its sponsorship rights in soccer will be considerably more than the sponsorships themselves. And by doing that, it is more likely to see a return on its massive World Cup investment and continue to grow on the world stage.

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