When Adidas signed a seven-year deal to become the on-ice uniform provider for the NHL, the German company didn’t have anyone working in a hockey-related business unit. Sure, the company owned Reebok, then the rights holder, but for Adidas, signing an agreement at the end of 2015 that would start in 2017 meant the company needed to create — and create quickly.
Now, over a year removed from the start of the Adidas-NHL partnership, not only has Adidas built an internal business unit that hadn’t existed, but it has fashioned a new model for brand engagement, both for the sneaker and apparel company and for the NHL.
And Adidas is quick to point out: Expect plenty more in the next six years.
Dan Near, senior director of Adidas Hockey, says when the brand signed with the NHL, it was clear they needed a shift in brand-league relationship thinking. Long gone was a structure of creating some cool jerseys and selling licensed product. Adidas, of course, still needed to move licensed products to help keep the lights on in the new business unit, but the brand’s focus had to be more than selling the latest Vegas Golden Knights garb. “It had to bring value to the brand in other ways,” Near says. The NHL league office veteran says they sat back and asked the question of why hockey. Why now? “It is a megaphone for the things our brand is doing,” he says. “Hockey is part of how we communicate with the consumer in North America.”
Consider that a new consumer to Adidas. In their goal of world domination in the athletic space, Adidas knows it must conquer North America. Jeff McGillis, head of North American sports for Adidas, says the brand has momentum in American football and baseball and the NHL represents an excess of 70 million fans, largely in the “snow belt” demographic that the brand hadn’t previously reached effectively.
But this new consumer wasn’t going to fall in love with Adidas simply because the brand slapped the three stripes on some gear or fashioned some snazzy new on-ice sweaters. Adidas needed to create authenticity in the sport through the partnership with the NHL, creating a sense of indispensability between the two.
So Near took to creating a business unit that approached league relations in a new way. Adidas pushed the traditionally traditional NHL league office to think creatively, pushed the design team to craft ideas outside of the box, pushed the communication team to build a new styling of messaging and pushed the marketing team to infiltrate the sport where it mattered most and with the athletes who made the biggest difference. The new Adidas Hockey business unit was a chance to create from the ground up.
Near admits things started a little rough. The unit opened offices in Toronto, near the NHL headquarters, but it was cut off from the creativity of its North American headquarters in Portland, Oregon. It was tied to the tradition. The unit moved into the rapidly growing Portland campus — now at 2,000 employees with near-constant construction creating more square footage for the expansion — pushing boxes out of corners to make room for storyboards, textile samples and workspaces.
From the start, Adidas built a team with a strong base in hockey — one uniform designer on staff in Portland has designed NHL jerseys for over 20 years — but also a unit full of fresh faces, such as the 20-something female that sits next to the veteran designer and brings a new twist to a game she grew up playing in Connecticut. Expect league vets, transplanted Canadians, folks who worked in other sports. “It is rare to have the opportunity to build a team from scratch,” Near says. “It was a chance to go hire against what the needs are.”
Adidas has approached hockey as a way to embrace culture and a new demographic, from the music used in advertising spots to the way athletes interact with fans. Creating third jerseys helps storytelling and getting athletes in training gear shows off the brand’s reach.
Adidas has enlisted its Brooklyn Farm creative offices to treat the NHL commissioner and top executives to a mix of forward-looking concepts, everything from introducing Parley in on-ice uniforms — the Adidas effort to use ocean plastics recycled into uniforms — to fresh ways of marketing marquee events such as the Winter Classic and Stadium Series.
Adidas has tried to infiltrate culture through what it knows best. Following the 2018 Stanley Cup championship, Adidas created a special sneaker out of its Speedfactory in Atlanta, a special-edition shoe designed and on sale five minutes following the Washington win. It sold out quickly.
In October, Adidas announced a partnership with EA Sports, makers of the most popular hockey video game, in a deal that has the two companies working together without money trading hands. As part of the deal, not only does Adidas have some of its skateboard and snowboard lifestyle gear available in the outdoor game mode of NHL 19, but in one of the biggest splashes yet, Adidas created a Digital 6 uniform design effort, an in-game only design of new uniforms for the league’s original six franchises.
To make it happen, all franchises bought in on the idea, working with Adidas along the way. Even though the uniforms come available only in the EA game, Matty Merrill, design director for Adidas Hockey, crafted them authentically so that the uniforms could be sewn together as a real on-ice option, if it was ever needed.
“That partnership (with EA) is really interesting in that it is two like-minded companies going after the same consumer set,” says Jason Berry, senior manager of brand communications for Adidas Hockey.
Near says it is efforts like partnering with major youth leagues — or even storied off-season leagues, such as in Minnesota — showing up at in-rink pro shops and even the EA partnership that helps show Adidas wants to be part of the sport, not just a maker of licensed gear. “Hockey fans have embraced what we are doing and love the jerseys and are interested in the partnerships,” he says. “It comes down to storytelling and product.”
From 3-on-3 tournaments to skills competitions at every level to supporting athlete camps, Adidas has worked to find a new connection with hockey. “The grass-roots conversation is very forward-looking,” Berry says. “We are connecting with the 13- to 18-year-old hockey player in North America, connecting with him or her on a one-on-one experiential level and always through the lens of speed and creativity.”
Berry says energy is key. When Vegas unveiled its new look, Adidas put on a show unlike previously seen in hockey to show off all 31 new Adizero-styled jerseys, the on-ice sweater that uses new materials for lighter weights, a streamlined cut for speed and strength in typical wear periods for durability that have NHL equipment managers pleased with. The Vegas event not only showed off the uniform technology, but the glitz behind what hockey branding could be, garnering the brand’s hockey accounts 40,000 new social media followers in one evening.
“Fans were seeing jerseys launched in a way that they weren’t used to seeing,” Berry says. “Taht was the first opportunity to showcase the energy the brand has and we’ve been moving from there.”
Adidas signed Sidney Crosby in November 2017 and then P.K. Subban a month later. The New York Rangers were featured in a World Cup spot in summer 2018 and Subban has appeared in plenty of Adidas “create” spots that include athletes from all sports.
Nic Corbett, director of NHL relations for Adidas Hockey, says the design team works directly with teams on third jersey designs and athlete integration. “You can see from the franchise games (Winter Classic, Stadium Series, etc.) a disruptive approach to the jersey and how we tell the story,” he says. “It feels good. The team is hungry to show the sport and hockey in a new way."
For Adidas, the new way also included taking a new approach to athletes. Instead of signing as many as possible, they looked for a few of the game’s elite players who aligned with brand values and had their own brand — read: social media followings — to come with.
“A lot of our athletes want to connect with the kid because hockey is a very grassroots-oriented sport,” Corbett says. Near says the best athlete alignments help Adidas show authenticity, too, such as Crosby’s Tim Horton’s deal — arguably the largest brand influencer on the game of hockey in Canada — putting Crosby and his Adidas uniform on the side of 250 million coffee cups across Canada.
“The kids deserve to know these players much deeper than they do now,” Corbett says. “We need to continue to introduce these athletes to those passionate fans and non-passionate fans. We owe it to the sport and owe it to our brand.”
On the retail side, Adidas doesn’t want to stand still. Already some teams have rolled out fresh takes on alternate third jerseys and expect several more teams to have a new third in 2019. Adidas installed an Adizero Zone inside the Minnesota Wild’s Xcel Energy Arena, allowing fans a new style of retail experience. The data has proven successful for the effort, so expect to see the zone appear in plenty of other arenas around the NHL. Adidas makes only the Authentic sweater for fans, creating a dramatic shift around market share of Authentic jersey purchases. What was once a low single digit representation of the jersey purchases has ballooned to in excess of 50 percent of jerseys sold.
Moving forward, Adidas Hockey knows it must keep moving fast. And moving globally. And for women. It has goals to keep its efforts focused forward.
“Our first year in the league was when the league was commemorating its first 100 years in hockey,” Corbett says. “Now what does the next 100 years look like and how can we help create that?”
