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April 2008 - Strategy Magazine
Who to watch

Maintaining the noise: Adidas' Micki Rivers

by Annette Bourdeau
page 20

Micki Rivers knows how to build street cred. The senior marketing manager at Concord, Ont.-based Adidas Canada is a longtime buzz-builder who realized early on in her career that allowing consumers to find her brands themselves goes a long way towards building brand loyalty.

Rivers wears many hats at Adidas - from managing the Originals and women's wear lines to coordinating PR events to developing relationships with retailers - but her focus on buzz building is consistent across everything she does. Her tactics must be working: Originals is worn by rock stars and skate kids, and the women's apparel is regularly featured in fashion mags.

Rivers is set to turn a lot of heads this month with a fresh Canadian activation of the global Adidas Grün (German for green) campaign. She'll be setting up in-store horticultural displays in the windows of 10 of her key accounts, ideally within close range of each other for maximum impact. At press time, she was aiming to do five along Toronto's trendy Queen West. The displays will include living plants, so Rivers is hiring a horticultural company to maintain the window displays throughout April. The effort coincides with Earth Day on Apr. 27. While there are many global Adidas initiatives this year, Rivers chose to really focus on Grün here because it's close to her heart. "I really believe [the environment] is an important issue," she says. "I drive a hybrid."

April is a busy month for Rivers. She'll be in Calgary for the Junos on Apr. 6, hanging out at the Adidas-sponsored "shoe-shine stand" at the official Junos musician hangout, dubbed the Rock Star Hotel. Rivers loves getting her product onto musicians who already wear Adidas, and having a presence at the Junos is a good way to meet lots of artists at once. "It hooks you up for future sponsorship opportunities," she says. Adidas is currently sponsoring artists like Bedouin Soundclash, Jully Black, Shout Out Out Out Out and Hedley. She won't sponsor just anyone, though: the artists have to demonstrate that they already like Adidas first - she doesn't want them wearing it just because it's part of a deal.

When Bedouin Soundclash's management approached her, they sent a music video in which the lead singer was wearing an old Adidas Originals T-shirt. That won Rivers over right away. Now, she sets them up with free product and modest financial support, and in exchange, the band members wear Adidas in public and in promotional images and videos. Adidas also sponsors the band's launch parties and provides gift bags for attendees, which lands the brand in the hands of even more key influencers.

Rivers' experience working with those influencers and early adopters is serving her well in her efforts to reach out to skateboarders. It's been a big focus for her since Adidas launched a skatewear line about two years ago. She's very careful not to alienate her target; you won't catch any Adidas skatewear advertised outside of a niche skate publication. Rivers is the first to admit when she's out of her element. As a suburban mom, she knows she's not in a skater's mindset, so she enlisted help.

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