If you’ve consumed any football media over the last few months, there’s no chance you’ve missed the hype around the newly released Adidas Predators.
It was comfortably the most hotly anticipated boot release in recent years.
And that’s down to one thing. Nostalgia.
Nostalgia is huge in marketing these days. Gen Z has embraced everything from the 90s and 00s, and the millennials who grew up in that time period now have the disposable income to indulge in revitalised products from their childhood.
The fact that the #nostalgia has over 20 billion views on TikTok shows how much people want to engage with it. Not that nostalgia is new as a marketing tactic, as this 2014 study shows that people are more likely to spend money on brands that inspire feelings of nostalgia.
In the past year some of the examples of products and marketing that we have seen spark that sense of nostalgia, and earned a lot of attention as a result. Remember how many people were talking about McDonalds’ Grimace shake?
In football, think about the love that retro style kits receive whenever they are launched, such as Adidas’ own Retro Originals Collection for national teams. Or how Liverpool’s away kit this season is a modern take on their 1995/96 away kit, still engaging that feeling of nostalgia.
Why does nostalgia matter?
Nostalgia is so powerful because of what it represents from the past, whether that’s happiness, freedom, or success. In many cases, football nostalgia represents all of those things and more.
That’s a huge part of why Adidas’ marketing for the Predator has been such a hit.
Global Category Director at adidas Football, Mahsa Aryan, knew just how powerful the nostalgic effect of the Predators would be when designing the boots, saying that ‘we wanted to get nostalgic about everything that our boots have represented in the past.’
The return of the tongue to the boot, last seen in 2009, immediately associates the boot with the players who wore those iconic boots. And they were some players. Think of those Predators and you’ll immediately see Beckham, Zidane, Gerrard and more.
Don’t get us wrong, Adidas have done everything right with the launch of this boot. The athletes they’ve signed to wear them, the build up to the launch, and the launch advert itself.
When it comes to modern players who could give that nostalgic link back to the icons who wore the original Predators, there’s nobody better than Trent Alexander-Arnold. And the video announcing him as an Adidas athlete was nostalgic perfection. Clips of a young ‘Trent’ training with his Predators, inspired by his hero Gerrard winning the Champions League in Istanbul wearing them, and saying that he always knew he would be back.
This shows the audience the emotional connection he has with the boots as well as reminding us of the icons who wore them and the success they had.
The fact that a week later he was scoring a match-winning goal in his brand-new, unreleased Predators only increased the hype around the boot, and sent the footballing corner of social media into a frenzy.
Of course, this wasn’t the only tie-in to Gerrard and the boot’s past, as they also released a video of Gerrard reviewing the new version of the boot that he was so closely linked to. Hearing Gerrard call it ‘an incredible boot’ and ‘that would be the boot I’d be wearing today if I was still playing’, while his retro shirts hang in the background, will have given any Liverpool fan a huge hit of nostalgia.
And then there are the adverts
While these don’t lean into nostalgia in the same way as the rest of the marketing for the boots, the campaign has been too good to not mention here.
Firstly, the launch advert with Bellingham. The line ‘why can’t I wear what she’s wearing?’ is brilliant. In such a male-dominated sport, showing one of the stars of world football envying a women’s player is fantastic, and the advert keeps getting better, with a classic theft and chase showing how much Bellingham wants the boots, before he immediately showcases his newfound scoring ability.
With nearly 7 million impressions on X, the envy of someone having the boots, implied scarcity, and suggested quality of the boots clearly resonated with fans. The follow up advert with Gabriel Jesus, Alessia Russo and Ian Wright doubles down on these themes, also adding nostalgia into the mix with the Kaka masks they wore. Numerous references to the number 30 (as the boot turns 30 years old) also hammer home the nostalgia.
The sustain marketing efforts with Diogo Jota, Joe Gomez and Joelinton acting in customer service roles to sell customers ‘goals’ has also been a hit, and shows how Adidas has used stars both past and present to great effect in their marketing for the boots.
These adverts blend humour with the core message of the launch, that these boots will help you score goals. And who doesn’t want to score goals?
There’s a lot to admire from the Adidas Predators launch, but here are some key takeaways:
- Lean into nostalgia – nostalgic trends are huge at the moment as both Gen Z and millennials hark back to simpler times with rose-tinted glasses. Think about how you can inspire a sense of nostalgia with your marketing.
- Create anticipation – with Trent Alexander-Arnold putting in man-of-the-match performances in the unreleased boots, people couldn’t wait to get their hands on a pair. Can you have athletes or influencers showing your product and its capabilities in the real world before you launch the product?
- Nail your creative – the launch advert got everyone talking about the boot, and evoked all of the right feelings. Following this up with more entertaining sustain videos to keep the conversation around the boot going without their audience becoming tired of hearing about the same kind of adverts worked perfectly. If you’re launching a product, think about how you can differentiate your launch and sustain campaigns to keep your audience interested.
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