Here’s the deal, you buy me a pair of $350 shoes, and I’ll pay you $5,400 for it.

In 2013, adidas confirmed a sneaker collaboration deal with Kanye West, and then adidas YEEZY BOOST was born.

Here’s the deal, you buy me a pair of $350 shoes called Adidas Yeezy 750 Boost, and I’ll pay you $5,400 for it.

Two months ago, Kanye West and adidas created a campaign for Kanye West x adidas Yeezy 750 Boost. It was so effective. 9000 pairs of limited Yeezy 750 Boost shoes were sold out within ten minutes after the release, and this also caused a stir on the sneaker resell market.

Within ten minutes!? How did they do it?

Here’s the Yeezy’s campaign strategy recap.

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adidas Confirmed App

The first thing that adidas did for Yeezy campaign was to design a fair shopping app for limited adidas shoes. Fans loved it! With the app, fans didn’t have to wake up so early, wait in the lines for hours and receive a sold out notification when getting to the register. They could reserve the latest limited adidas sneakers via adidas Confirmed and get the shoes at a specified local retailer.

Also, I think Kanye’s idea of creating a region restriction in buying Yeezy 750 Boost was very clever. The shoes were only available for the fans who live in New York City, and this obviously produced an extra uniqueness of Yeezy 750 Boost.

What’s more, the Confirmed shopping experience would provide fans a free ticket to Kanye’s the Roc city classic concert. (Another stimulation for buying Yeezy 750 Boost.) After Kanye tweeted the information on his twitter, it successfully boosted the numbers of app downloads.

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An Invitation to New York Fashion Week 2015

After adidas received an invitation to NYFW15, the company sent a press release. This was the first time that adidas participated in NYFW15, and Kanye and adidas would definitely use this chance to display their new coming sneaker: Yeezy 750 Boost.

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A ‘Yeezy Supply’ Countdown Website

Kanye built a website, Yeezy.supply, that showcased a countdown timer for the Yeezy 750 Boost’s unveiling and also the day of NYFW15. Some bloggers wrote negative comments on it, but personally, I liked it very much. Many fans checked the site everyday as if they were kids wait for Christmas, and this only increase their desire of getting Yeezy 750 Boost.

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Images of Yeezy 750 Boost on Social Media before the Release

Yeezy campaign also got some helps from celebrities. Before the release, Ibn Jasper, Kanye’s barber of 19 years, and Kim Kardashian, Kanye’s wife, posted the images of Yeezy 750 Boost separately on their Instagram.

After Kanye preformed at Grammy while wearing Yeezy 750 Boost, the videos and photos went viral. I would say that Kanye West must somehow learned marketing before.

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The adidas Yeezy 750 Boost Window Displaying on adidas’ SoHo Store

When Yeezy 750 Boost was on display at the adidas’ SoHo store, every fan was crazy since this was the first time that fans could see Yeezy 750 Boost physically. People posted and shared the images on social media and even newspapers wrote about it.

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$2,500 for a Yeezy 750 Boost Pre-order on ebay

Due to the region restriction that made by adidas Confirmed, Yeezy fans started to pre-order the shoes on multiple online auctions and shopping websites, including ebay, which had the highest pre-order price in the U.S.

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Adidas Yeezy Season 1 Show at New York Fashion Week

On February 12, Kaney made the Yeezy 750 boost shoes’ debut at New York Fashion Week and the NBA All-Star Weekend. Surprisingly, Yeezy dominated the social web scene of NYFW15.

In addition, the presentation of Yeezy was streamed live to 50 theaters worldwide, and at the same day, the Yeezy 750 boost reservations went live.

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Unveiling Yeezy 750 Boost

A line of sneaker fans was waiting outside of adidas’ SoHo store for the initial release of adidas 750 Yeezy Boost on February 14, “celebrating” their Valentine’s Day. The Yeezy 750 Boost news was all over the world. You could see the shoes on Facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about Yeezy and on that weekend, the highest resell price for Yeezy 750 Boost on ebay was $5,400. I would say Yeezy 750 Boost is “the most profitable stock” to buy.

As you can see, the Yeezy campaign was extremely brilliant and successful. Instead of spending a lot of money on advertising, Kanye and Adidas focused on the related events and social media. Yeezy 750 Boost fitted into Kanye’s life naturally, and it created brand awareness through information consistency. However, before the release, Kanye said that after the initial run, there would be more shoes for everybody. Wasn’t this a contradiction with the limited edition idea? Besides this, I believe that Kayne still captured fans hearts. Like I said last week.

Once customers love your brand, they can’t live without you.

He also emphasized on the benefit of the shoes that would bring to customers rather than featuring the products and generated a want and need for sneaker fans as if this trendy product were the must-have shoe for each one of them.

 

You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy shoes and that’s kind of the same thing.

 

Samuel

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Photography/ adidas, Hypebeast, Highsnobiety, Nicekicks