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Adidas Challenge App Gets Fans Moving, Wins Bayern Munich HackDays

MUNICH — A team called “Beat Adidas” became the first to win the grand prize at FC Bayern Munich’s inaugural HackDays event which ran from Jan 19-22.

The hackathon event was divided up into seven predetermined challenges, with this team taking part in the Adidas stream. In order to win the grand prize, it first needed to win this stream to take part in the final and then faced off against the six other challenge winners.

The Adidas challenge focused on how mobile interaction could influence commerce and raise in-app conversion rates for the brand, specifically amongst Generation Z fans. The winning team was led by Christoph Hamsen, a quantum physicist who recently finished his Ph.D.

In order to try to win the competition, the team created “The Adidas Challenge” app within the allotted four days. First, team members created a user persona and focused on what they called a “creator of urban,” who is a Gen Z street soccer player who won’t leave home with his or her mobile device, but wants to be engaged in an experience. From there, they built the app to appeal to this audience.

In an interview at the event, Hamsen outlined what they were trying to achieve: “Our idea is to gamify the interaction and experience that people have with the brand Adidas. People think of it as a seller of sportswear, and what we want to do is to give people a different way to interact with the brand, via an app that uses push notification challenges.”

The idea of this app is to challenge fans to do a task and once they complete it, they receive a reward related to Bayern Munich and Adidas, which sponsor the apparel of the German champions.

“We want to challenge young fans by saying, ‘You get $15 off this new soccer jersey if you are successful in our challenge,’ and this challenge might or might not be connected to sport,” Hamsen said. “For example, do 10 squats in 20 seconds and if you make it, you’ll get your $15 off your FC Bayern jersey.

“However, there is a twist before you get to use your reward we ask, ‘Do you want to continue to have challenges?’ This is the point where you embark on a new journey. Once a fan says yes, you don’t know when Adidas will contact you, where it is going to happen, what it is going to be and what’s the reward.

“This is how we think the people could interact with the brand in a completely new way.”

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The team actually tested the app on fans in the stands at FC Bayern’s iconic Allianz Arena during the team’s match this past weekend against Werder Bremen. The experience, according to Hamsen was extremely worthwhile as it enabled his team to see how someone not connected to the project interacted with the app and used it.

“The first version of the app challenged people to do a jump squat, and we felt this was a sports-focused challenge,” he said. “But when we shared it with people, they used their phone in a very different way.

“We designed it in a way that it uses acceleration sensors so you only have to hold it in your hand. You don’t have to look at it and people get feedback on if their jump squat was successful via vibration in the app.”

But the Beat Adidas team was surprised by how some people approached the challenges within the app.

“However, many people kept on looking at the phone,” Hamsen said. “They wanted to see the result of their motion, they also tried to cheat it by moving their arm around, which doesn’t work. After a while though, they learned how the device expects them to actually do it.

“That was very interesting to see. We meant to pose a sports challenge, people actually saw it as a different way to interact with the app.”

Hamsen admitted that this real-world testing changed how they not only viewed the app, but also how they would pitch it to the judges.

“What we learned was that buying will be funner,” he said. “For example, if you lose the challenge you can redo it, different challenges will be part of the shopping experience, but most importantly, they want to have this experience.”

Beyond the challenges within the app, the team also focused on how this could drive engagement for both the Adidas brand and Bayern Munich. They suggested that certain challenge results could be displayed on the in-stadium screens to generate more interest and also that such challenges could be used to promote certain events, such as the launch of special edition product lines.

Beat Adidas triumphed over 70 other teams and their prize is to accompany FC Bayern on a Champions League game. Described by FC Bayern’s Project Manager for Digital Club Platforms, Benjamin Stoll as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” the winners will travel with the team, eat at the official pre-match banquet with the soccer stars and also attend the match.

Immediately following the win, the team was whisked off to the Digital-Life-Design (DLD) technology conference, to present their idea at the event.

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