How do you create massive hype for the tiniest of products? With a crazy amount of passion, an immense understanding of how sneaker culture works and a lot of man hours to pull it all off. First, our big thinking started small, as we created the product itself: the world's first limited-edition, ultra-exclusive, mini Sour Brite Sneaks (only available at 7-Eleven), and paired it with our lead spokesperson, NBA All-Star James Harden. But to launch it Trolli had to up its street cred with sneakerheads before dropping its itty-bitty kicks on the world.
We came up with a concept and strategy that followed the cycle of any new shoe launch, which involved a myriad of smaller tactics that produced more and more hype, until ultimately the groundswell produced a frenzied demand that popped off right as the candy released.
To stay stay in-budget, we got scrappy on social, partnered with known shoe photogs for "unofficial" sneak peeks, looked to Instagram to feed sneaker obsessives' lust for customizing their own kicks, enlisted the game’s greatest influencers to unbox our tiny sneaks, then wrapped it all up with with an unbelievable, gummified, larger-than-life shoe drop in a partnership with Adidas on StockX (where all sole fans go to buy and resell hard-to-find kicks). All of this culminating in the most successful candy launch for Trolli [and 7-Eleven] to date.
MASS SAMPLING ala NBA ALL-STAR WEEK
To leak Sour Brite Sneaks at the 2018 NBA All-Star Weekend, we gave away 10,000 individual pairs of Trolli Sour Brite Sneaks in their own custom-designed miniature shoeboxes. With Harden dropping his new Adidas Vol. 2’s there, there was no better time to give fans a tiny taste of Harden’s newest signature gummi. Sneaker freaks not only ate them up, but also shared them on social.
“Launched during NBA All-Star Week and dropped at 7-Elevens, Sour Brite Sneaks danced all over social media.”
INFLUENCER INVASION
Sneakerheads live for online shoe porn, but it's also where they get the their first unofficial look at shoes that are about to be released. So we created a kit complete with tiny hoodie, tiny socks, tiny basketball and, of course, a pair of Trolli Sour Brite Sneaks in their own tiny shoebox. We sent them to some of the biggest sneaker influencers on the internet. Inspiring them to create and share their own tasty Trolli content across Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. All the while, hype started to rise for the product and conversations began to grow about how get their hands on them.
“SNEAKS” ATTACK UNBOXING
Unboxings are an online phenomenon. And no one loves them more than sneaker freaks. So we created a custom Trolli shoebox and sent it to two YouTube sneaker gods. They thought they were reviewing a real sneaker. But this ultra-premium box came with a twist. Inside were 13 smaller boxes with a tiny pair of gummi sneaks hidden in the center. Trolli “trolled” the unboxers and turned a shoebox into an absurdly hilarious social stunt that helped to reinforce the notion that they were weirdly awesome- and could only be copped at 7-Elevens.
REMIXING A NEW INSTAGRAM FUNCTION
In the world of sneakerheads, customization is everything. And Instagram is the go-to platform for personal expression. So we created a breakthrough Instagram Story that reinvented the way candy could be “sampled,” letting digitally savvy sneakerheads show off their own creative flavor using Instagram’s all-new “Remix” functionality. Our candy became their canvas, and fans were so immersed in customizing Trolli kicks, they spent an average of 7+ minutes creating digital content so bizarrely creative, it blew even our minds.
TROLLI x JAMES HARDEN x ADIDAS x STOCKX STUNT
As the world’s largest marketplace for certified authentic sneakers, StockX is the place sneaker freaks go to find exclusive kicks. To hijack the momentum of Harden’s shoe drop and our own Sour Brite Sneaks launch, we dropped the rarest pair of sneakers to ever hit StockX: life-sized Trolli sneaks you can eat. Exact gummi replicas of Harden’s newest sneakers were so fresh, so rare, they were actually perishable. Trolli became the first to ever drop candy sneaks on the site, making these kicks a “must-cop” collectible.
