A lot of men like watching football. They like local leagues, leagues from abroad and definitely the UEFA Champions League (UCL). Back in the day, we were doing worldwide research into the viewing habits of these football loving men. What we noticed was that most of these guys watching the UCL games were doing this alone at home. Not surprising on one hand, given that these games are broadcasted Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which means they would be watching them after a day’s work. But alone. The pressure to stay at home and not go out to watch at the neighbor’s place was too high. But that did not stop them from communicating with each other through various means as text, WhatsApp and Twitter. Got us thinking, “Why not enable them to talk about the game with a football legend?” And alas, #ShareTheSofa was born. During the match, a legendary player would be watching the same game and would answer questions about the game, or basically anything as people soon noticed, even whether they liked sandwiches with peanut butter. Over time, we had the likes of Hernán Crespo, Ruud van Nistelrooij, Juliano Belletti, Patrick Kluivert and Fernando Morientes sitting on the sofa. It spread worldwide and we had thousands of tweets per game pouring in. Amazing amounts of fun and joy when people were connected to their football idols, even for just a moment. Fun anecdote was that we got noticed by other legend players, who as I can imagine phoned their managers saying:” Why are Ruud and Hernán sitting on that sofa? I am a legendary player, why am I not sitting there? Go call those Heineken people!!” And so, we got calls from various managers asking if we were interested in their big-name football legends to sit on the sofa. Cause it fit the platform, the interaction, the brand, it all worked.

Getting celebrities involved in your brand sounds amazingly cool. It certainly is a great story to tell at Friday drinks in the bar (in non – Covid times), exciting to interact with on sets and stages and to watch happening on the screen. But just sticking them on does not always pan out well, as we have seen in the past. Not going to go down that route, you can surely find those examples yourself. The right marketing team and its agency sets out to find the right person to get involved, someone who isn’t just “cool” or has gigantic following on Instagram, but actually matches the values of the brand and resonates those. Some of these celebs can tune their magic to work for multiple brands, and some keep on doing it, and have been doing it for ages.

Kermit the frog is an experienced, seasoned, highly professional celeb. Kermit has a huge number of films and series credited to his name on IMDB, going back all the way to 1955. Even though he is a sought-after actor, his celeb status has never driven him off the right path. Aside from some innuendo with miss Piggy, the guy seems flawless. A true professional. He also transcends age groups, target audiences and trends.

Enter Adidas. For its most recent campaign the sport shoe giant teamed up with the green fellow to promote its new Stan Smith line, which have been designed to be more sustainable. It all comes together in a way Adidas and Kermit can only pull off. It doesn’t become comical or weird. Adidas manages to find a balance between delivering a serious message as well as putting their shoe and brand in the forefront. How wrong this could have gone! They give the term “green” a whole new meaning. Very nicely created by agency Johannes Leonardo, who knew they could also count on Kermit to enlist one of his best buds in the business, another “little green friend” as he was once called. That fellow created an entire new following in the last 2 years by stealing the thunder in “The Mandalorian”. This Adidas ad is a showcase example of how it’s done.

It started with a shoe; a shoe being more sustainably produced. The concept demanded for the right celeb to be involved, not anyone who is “just” famous or a main influencer with a big following. That’s exactly what you need to think about as a marketer, to think beyond that fun story at Friday drinks. To have an actual impact for your brand and the communications goals set. Not because you are dying for an autograph. Although I can imagine hanging out with Kermit on set must have been fun as well.