The adidas Originals MEGA Diner officially opened and was ready for business on July 30, 2010.  A commercial was posted to the adidas Originals YouTube page and a virtual MEGA diner was created on the adidas Originals website. adidas Originals announced: “Get in line with Paul Iacono for your own tasty MEGA Special, served up fresh by B.o.B. behind the grill.

Enter the MEGA Diner online and our smokin’ hot waitress will take your order, leaving it to B.o.B. to deliver a custom MEGA Special personalized for you and your friends. It’s the biggest, baddest, freshest thing we got. Get it while it’s hot!”









To most people, this would most likely be seen as just another advertisement. To me it was a MEGA opportunity! And one that I had to jump on quickly while the campaign still had  full momentum. But why would adidas Originals and B.o.B ever want to associate with a small sneaker site - AllWhiteKicks.com? I remember thinking that they must find me somewhat influential since AllWhiteKicks.com was already a member of adidas Originals’ exclusive list of people they follow on Twitter. You can read my entire story about how that relationship transpired in my previous post How Twitter Helped Me Become An Influencer In The Sneaker Industry.

Jumping On An Opportunity

On Thursday, August 12 my wife (@katcadwell) told me she bought tickets to the B.o.B concert playing at the House of Blues in Boston on the 15th. At the time, I was actually mad at myself because I did not realize  B.o.B was going to be in town. I thought it was a golden opportunity that I had missed out on – if only I had known about this concert a week or two earlier I could have made something special happen through my connections with adidas Originals. After spending a few miserable hours moping, an idea finally came to me. It was a long shot but I had to try something. I was going to report live from the concert through my mobile phone and post the content on AllWhiteKicks.com. In addition, I would use Twitter for my messaging and flickr for my photos and videos.

I quickly relayed my idea to my contacts at adidas Originals. At first, my request was to see if I could get an interview with B.o.B himself. To my surprise, this far out request was not shut down. In fact, they responded quickly to my request and tried immediately to secure an interview for me. I knew from my time running events at Going.com that a two day window (one being a business day and the other on a weekend) would probably not be enough time for adidas Originals to secure an interview with their talent. As I waited patiently I knew I needed to find an alternative route to take advantage of this opportunity and bring my concept to life. My original idea was that the content from my interview would drive traffic. But it soon became clear that the content I created from the concert that would need to drive it. But how in the world would I get the word out about my coverage?

So once again I sent what I thought would be a far reaching request out to adidas Originals. I wanted them to promote the AllWhiteKicks.com coverage of the B.o.B event to their Twitter followers (30,000 +) and their Facebook group, which is nearly 3.9 million strong! Don’t forget, if people ‘like’ the event (1,000 + people did) on the adidas Originals page, my reach would be further extended through their network. On the day of the event I sent this request to adidas Originals asking if they would promote our coverage on their Twitter and Facebook communities. And sure enough, they said……YES!

A Shining Moment

AllWhiteKicks.com originated in a classroom at Northeastern University. My goal was to create a niche based website with little to no capital invested – the site was going to grow organically. I knew the sneaker world very well and also understood how competitive it would be. Thus, I decided to focus on one type of sneaker and own that vertical – all white kicks. As many people know growing a site organically takes a ton of time and a huge amount of dedication. I am not going to lie. Keeping AllWhiteKicks.com afloat through working full-time, planning a wedding (I got married June 13), and going to business school was an extraordinary challenge. But to me as an aspiring entrepreneur I believed in my skills and in my idea. And on August 15, 2010 all of my hard work paid off. AllWhiteKicks.com was introduced to the sneaker world. My brand (my idea!) was introduced to millions of people across the globe!

The Campaign

The day of the campaign my wife and I rushed to the Adidas outlet store in Wrentham, MA. We of course had to stalk up on adidas Originals gear. We made an entire day out of the event and created some pretty amazing content. To see the live event post from the day of the event visit here http://allwhitekicks.com/awk-bob-concert-boston/ and to see our follow up post after the event visit here http://allwhitekicks.com/awk-at-the-bob-concert/.

End Results

For all of you out there who have read this post,  you are probably thinking that while this is a great story, it did not make money. I say this to you all– It’s pretty hard to find a link or recommendation on AllWhiteKicks.com that is not part of an affiliated deal . The campaign delivered thousands upon thousands of page views. To my surprise I also had a few hundred people sign up for our newsletter. This is something we don’t push very strongly on the site.

The real success of AllWhiteKicks.com was not in this campaign alone. The true success lays within its organically grown route to grow traffic and gain the attraction of brands like adidas Originals. If you type “White Sneakers” into Google we are on the second page and climbing. If you type “White sneaker” into Google we are on the first page. When I started the site almost a year ago my first and most important goal was to gain a first page ranking for both of these terms. We are getting there!

Something To Ponder

• I achieved all of this with little to no capital invested
• I attended business school at Northeastern University (Part-time)
• I work full time as a director of New Media at a kick ass PR firm
• I had to help plan a wedding (Far and away the largest challenge – guys you know what I mean)

If I could achieve all this with all these other things going on then you can do it to! Just be sure to pick the right concept, develop the right message, and don’t give up. I can’t tell you how many people thought I was crazy and that AllWhiteKicks.com would never amount to anything. Well, now those who used to be opposed are big fans. Not only because they like white sneakers but because they like the story. The little guy made it!