adidas Messi 5 holographic digital experience

I have maintained a 15+ year relationship delivering engaging retail experiences for adidas Canada across 3 agencies. Over the past 2 years my team has been helping adidas identify the latest innovations in transparent display technology. As part of our process, we consulted on determining the right content types to maximize engagement. On October 2022 adidas opened it's first Halo Flagship location in Canada at Cadillac Fairview's Toronto Eaton Centre - Toronto's premium downtown mall destination. This store is over 12,000 square feet and offers a fully immersive consumer experience with a lounge, personal shopping space, community activation area, and is filled with engaging digital experiences that are intended to wow customers and immerse them in the adidas brand story.

​The focus of the store and the digital experiences within draws inspiration from the mosaic of the city where art, multi-culture, and diversity meet, the new store brings sustainability to light through an urban landscape lens. The latest transparent display technology helps attract customers in from the mall at the store front. Additional digital signage canvases throughout include a massive shoe LED wall with a peg board racking system that allows footwear to be merchandised on the LED itself. As part of the rich multi-cultural society in Toronto and adidas position as a sports leader, remaining current with major global sporting events is vital. Their is no larger event than The Fifa World Cup, and no bigger athlete than Lionel Messi. With the world cup already underway once the digital canvases where ready, their was very little time to adapt global campaigns to effectively engage customers in their respective digital signage mediums. With several nations wearing adidas kits, several content spots where produced. As the World Cup came to probably the most dramatic conclusion in history, Argentina defeated defending champion France. Messi (adidas flagship athlete) went down in history as football's true GOAT (Greatest of all time). A great campaign spot that adidas created called "The Impossible Rondo" featured Lionel Messi at 5 different stages of his professional career chasing the world cup dream. This campaign idea was further expanded in a prompt reaction to the world cup win. With the true spirit of adidas tagline "Impossible is Nothing" as the driving message, the ultimate symbol of this message was showcased by Messi never giving up and finally claiming the title after 5 attempts. Our team went to work quickly sourcing imagery from adidas archives of Messi from the various world cups to create a layered composition with "The Messi 5" coming together to celebrate the victory. The content showcases modern day Messi carrying his 19 year old self on his back as his young self lifts the world cup trophy. The pair is surrounded by 3 other Messi players from additional world cup years. The content inspires, allows people to dream and amazes visitors through "Holographic visualization" that stops mall patrons in their tracks and pulls them in store.

​Transparent display technology has stunning capabilities but also poses real challenges in content creation. Through transparent digital canvases visibility into the store through the technology coupled with digital animated content allows for truly unique content to be created. In order to achieve this however our team incorporated advanced motion graphics tactics like parallax animation, pseudo 3D, and forced perspective to help trick the eyes and deliver "Holographic Effects". We created a 3D perspective warp canvas in the background that would rotate from left to right and then back again. Forced perspective was achieved with the Messi 5 at varying layer depths in the scene. The layers rotated in our 3D scene at different speeds to further enhance the "Z-depth" and parallax movement. From a results perspective, Argentina World Cup gear has been consistently sold out since the World Cup finals when the first iterations of our content played. Store staff confirms that customers have been consistently running in the store after seeing the content play and asking if new inventory is available. The content is the ultimate hook at the store front to attract customers in and help lift sales. The content was also featured in Vegas at CES The largest Global Consumer Electronics Show on a brand new innovative Transparent LED technology solution that our team is helping to pioneer in North America. We have been testing this technology for over 8 months now and have helped the manufacturer secure a "Best New Innovative Product in Display and projection Award" at the LDI show in December. New projects are already currently under development utilizing this innovative Holographic LED technology with adidas.