With the finals coming up this weekend, adidas' 'Vertical Sprint' in two cities in Asia has already hit thousands, if not millions, of television sets both in and outside the region, achieving the kind of PR bang for the buck that most advertisers can only dream of.
For a jaded media world, the 'Impossible Sprint' - the world's first vertical track event - was simply too audacious to ignore. This even after adidas had pulled off something similar, though far less ambitious, for the 2002 World Cup with TBWA's award-winning 'Vertical Football'.
This time around, adidas and its agency partners, TBWA and Carat, set out to reprise the Olympics' glamour event - the 100m sprint - but with a twist, based on an idea proposed by TBWA\Japan ECD John Merrifield.
"This event is an extension of adidas' long history of challenging the impossible based on the attitude shared by athletes around the world," says Christophe Bezu, adidas senior vice-president, Asia-Pacific. "It complements the spirit of Asian sportsmanship and to inspire athletes to redefine the limits of performance."
Indeed, the vertical sprint demanded extreme athleticism, courage and endurance from the 80 sprinters who competed in Hong Kong and Osaka. As such, it allowed adidas to demonstrate its 'Impossible is Nothing' brand mantra in a manner that was larger and more spectacular than any sports event done for the Olympic year, according to the sports apparel company.
Runners - both young and old and from all walks of life, including police officers, clerks, engineers and journalists, all relatively seasoned climbers - had to haul themselves up floor by floor up 33 stories. In the first round of heats and quarter-finals, they "sprinted" up eight-lane tartan tracks, which were laid on landmark buildings in both cities.
Bezu said the sprint was also seen as a way for the brand to ignite Asia's interest in the Olympics, an event where adidas has equipped 26 of the 28 sports, involving some 4,000 athletes in all, from swimming sensation Ian Thorpe to sprinter Maurice Greene and basketballer Tim Collins.
As exciting as the sprint itself was, work behind the scenes to pull off the event ran to a nail-biting finish as well. With about six months to pull off the coup, the biggest difficulty was to convince building owners and Government authorities that the technical and safety challenges could be surmounted. The original plan had been to run the event in 10 to 12 cities in the region, but pre-requisites such as buildings of 150 m in height, with flat surfaces and in downtown, high-traffic locations, lead to the event being scaled down.
For media agency, Carat, the biggest challenge was to convince building owners. "When we went to talk to building developers, we positioned it as a mutually beneficial project from a communications perspective as we were creating a new sports event," said Lyn Rogers, regional business director at Carat. The agency handled building negotiation in both markets with its subsidiary Posterscope. "It's something that a developer like Swire (in Hong Kong) could be linked to a new event during the Olympic Games."
Because budgets were limited, Rogers said the brand couldn't pay as it was a media deal. "There was no media costs attached; negotiations were based on the benefits to the two buildings," said Rogers.
Convincing the building owners meant bringing in experts from the vertical world, including structural engineers, to iron out safety issues. Hong Kong-based Petzl worked with structural engineers on layout of the structure and an event management team handled crowd control. "Everything had to work hand-in-hand and we didn't get Government approval (in Hong Kong) until last Thursday (two days before the race)," says Rogers.
So while the Olympics return to its spiritual home hogged sport headlines around the world, the adrenaline rush of a never-been-done-before vertical sprint proved to be a guaranteed media draw.
It made the airwaves and broadsheets, not just in Asia, but around the world. CNN had its reporter and cameraman abseiling down from the top down - the other way proved a little too challenging for non-climbers - to give its coverage a bona fide adrenaline rush. At press-time, the CNN spot had been picked up and aired across the US over 60 times, including KTLA's Morning News (Los Angeles) and Fox's Wake Up News & Morning News across a number of cities. The spot also ran in Asia-Pacific, Europe and Africa. Similarly Reuters' TV footage was beamed by satellite to hundreds of its network subscribers, while Japan's Weekly Shincho ran a double-page spread on the event.
All of which should help adidas' cause turn the 'Impossible Sprint' grow into arecognised extreme sport.
"It would be great to see a regional championship," said competitor Stuart Sharpless, who goes into the semi-finals with a time of seven minutes 40 seconds, and stands to win a cash prize of about US$10,000 if he is in first place. "There is definite interest from the climbing community."