Where the Digital Sausage Is Made: Inside Adidas' World Cup Roost

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Members of Adidas digital teams from around the world hard at work at the company's World Cup headquarters in Rio de Janeiro on June 20, 2014.

Image: Mashable/Sam Laird

By Sam Laird2014-06-26 02:31:23 UTC

RIO DE JANEIRO — The World Cup is the biggest sporting event on Earth — making it, obviously, the biggest soccer event on Earth. For Adidas — still the world's most iconic futebol brand despite a furious push from Nike in recent years — this makes the World Cup a rather humongous deal.

Adidas sponsors the tournament, and is pulling out all the stops to extend its brand reach, imprint the three stripes in consumers' minds and generally make Brazil 2014 a smash success. Its efforts start at Adidas Posto, a temporary command center and workspace the company has set up at the headquarters of Clube de Regatas do Flamengo, Brazil's most popular professional team, which is located in this glamorous ocean-side city and sponsored by Adidas.

During the World Cup's one-month duration, social, digital, PR, marketing and event managers from the United States, UK, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, China and other countries will all run operations from the temporary mothership.

Pashington Obeng, Adidas Soccer's senior brand-communications and digital-marketing manager for North America, and his team follow World Cup games to produce content to share across its social channels.

"We start the days talking about key match-ups, which match-ups are most relevant for key markets and then our attack plans for each match-up," he said on a recent afternoon at Adidas Posto's rooftop deck. "The big questions are what content we have to celebrate our key players, whether it's for a goal or a hat-trick or any other cool events that we know our fans are looking for."

That means, in part, leveraging Adidas' status as a chief World Cup sponsor to provide content from vantage points to which other brands aren't allowed access. They include views from the pitch, the tunnel and team locker rooms. Take, for example, this Vine video posted from Arena Pernambuco in Recife, where Team USA will take on Germany Thursday.

Another key element is finding creative ways to promote the players and teams that Adidas sponsors. When Thomas Müller scored a hat-trick in Germany's first game, the company posted this animation to celebrate the feat:

Thankfully for Adidas, the players it sponsors have been performing well in this World Cup. As of Wednesday night, the company's signature F50 cleat was used to score more goals (33) than any other boot worn by players. Then there's the official World Cup ball Brazuca, whose sassy online personality has helped it attract more than 2 million Twitter followers.

Of course, all this digital content doesn't materialize out of thin air. Much of Adidas Posto's decor celebrates past World Cups, and showcases teams that the brand sponsors at this year's event. It looks like a soccer museum of sorts, although one centered on a particularly conspicuous brand.

But the facility's epicenter is a centrally located room full of desks, TVs and more gadgets than you can count. There, digital-content teams from around the world tune in to every game — Photoshop and Twitter at the ready — to fire appropriate reactions out to fans. And it's all in the name of Adidas.

GoldenBoot

The Golden Boot, to be awarded to the World Cup's top scorer after the tournament ends, sits on display at Adidas' temporary headquarters in Rio de Janeiro on June 20, 2014.

Image: Mashable/Sam Laird

"Whether it's Twitter or Instagram or whatever else, all the fans back home — wherever home is — are expecting things to come out quick and almost instantaneously after a big moment happens," Obeng said.

That's been a particular challenge at this year's World Cup, marked by a deluge of goals — many of them coming seemingly within just a few moments of one another. But quick thinking, tweeting and Instagramming are just part of a day's work for Obeng and the other Adidas employees gathered in Rio for this, the mother of all sporting events.

"As the major sponsor of the World Cup, we owe it to our fans to celebrate the cool things that are happening during the tournament," he said.

For a closer look inside Adidas' World Cup command center, check out the gallery, below.