A new home page design that expresses the premium quality of the adidas brand went live last week on the company’s U.S. e-commerce site, shopadidas.com.

The clean, distinctively adidas design introduces a series of rotating banners that reflect the company’s current marketing campaigns.  The rotating banners automatically refresh the look of the home page, while giving consumers multiple pathways to select products based on gender, brand, sport and product type.

Shopadidas.com also features links for popular searches and top visited locations, as well as three sub-banners that subtly highlight distinct product collections and sub-brands.  Other features include a view into the shopadidas Twitter feed, and a simplified site map that makes accessing content easier for the consumer, while improving the site’s visibility in search results. 

Isobar’s redesign team worked within a very short timeframe to develop the new design, which accomplishes adidas’ business need of making their products easier and more intuitive for the consumer to access than ever before.

The Boston Bruins have partnered  Isobar North America to launch the interactive Facebook game “Bruins Face Off.”  

The interactive game allows Bruins fans to compete against their Facebook friends and fellow fans around the world by predicting the statistical output of their favorite players based on points, hits and shots on goal during each game of the playoffs. To play “Bruins Face Off,” fans can visit the Bruins Facebook page at www.facebook.com/NHLBruins beginning Wednesday, April 14.

 ”Bruins Face Off gives us the opportunity to leverage the popularity of Facebook and provide a new experience to our loyal fans just as playoff excitement kicks in,” Boston Bruins SVP of Sales and Marketing, Amy Latimer said. “Our goal is to create greater engagement between fans and the Bruins brand, and our investment in social media platforms has this potential.”

 A number of prizes will be awarded to participants throughout the Bruins playoff run. Bruins fans will have the opportunity to win a variety of autographed Bruins memorabilia as well as a chance to win a suite at the 2010-‘11 Bruins home game at the TD Garden for the winner and 17 Facebook friends.

 ”One of the primary goals in creating Bruins Face Off was to build on fan excitement and give them a special way to get even more engaged with the team during this incredibly exciting playoff timeframe,” said Daren Trousdell, EVP of Sales and Marketing at Isobar North America. “This is the time of the year that fans live for and the team wanted to give all their fans – not just those lucky enough to have tickets – another way to be part of the game-time action.”

 Isobar also created a successful interactive Facebook application for the Boston Celtics at the start of the NBA season called “3-Point Play.”

 The 2010 Boston Bruins Playoffs are delivered by AT&T. Fans interested in learning more about Boston Bruins players, or ticket options, should visit the team website at www.bostonbruins.com or call 617-624-BEAR.

Isobar North America’s San Francisco-based team received top honors from Promo magazine’s Interactive Marketing Awards for its “Killed Ideas” campaign on behalf of Blurb, taking both first place in the New Media category and second place in the Integrated Promotion category.   Promo’s Interactive Marketing Awards honor the best and brightest in effective interactive marketing. Executives from Isobar and Blurb plan to speak in detail about the campaign at WOMMA’s 2010 School of WOM (Word of Mouth) Conference, held in Chicago on May 24-26th.

Blurb is the creative publishing and marketing platform used by creative professionals and consumers worldwide to create, publish, share and sell professional-quality books. With its service already popular among photographers and designers, the company partnered with Isobar to help expand its reach into a broader set of business users, specifically advertising and marketing agency creative professionals. Isobar’s powerful “Killed Ideas” campaign engaged agency professionals by appealing to their passion for creative ideas, while simultaneously showcasing the power of putting ideas to print. The multifaceted campaign featured participation from leading advertising industry pundits and influencers; an integrated use of web, social media and word-of-mouth techniques; and strong results that mapped to specifically defined campaign goals. 

Congrats to our friends at Blurb and our San Francisco-based team!

On Monday, adidas and Isobar unveiled a series of exciting new enhancements to adidas miCoach, the interactive training service that delivers audible coaching while you run. Already one of the most advanced and personal applications on the Web today, miCoach.com incorporates new features and functionality that help runners better manage their training programs, and reflects adidas commitment to listening to the needs of consumers and creating a better experience for their miCoach users.

Key enhancements to miCoach.com include:

• A robust Routes management tool that enables users to create and edit routes, add ratings and notes to existing routes, and add, move or delete route points.
• New community tools that provide a forum where runners can share training tips with other runners, get tips and tricks on using miCoach, see upcoming events, access miCoach-related videos and get updates on the latest gear.
• Custom workout capabilities that enable runners to build their own custom workouts from scratch.
• A new Achievements section that recognizes key personal milestones, records and overall workout stats, such as fastest mile run, most calories burned, and more.
• Updated Reminder functionality that enable users to choose when they want to be reminded of workouts and when they’ve been inactive.

The enhanced site also provides adidas with sophisticated content management capabilities that enable each market to showcase featured products, as well as localized content, pricing and store locations to meet the needs of individual markets.

Global Frozen Food Leader Taps Isobar to Elevate Its Online Brand Presence

Global frozen food leader McCain Foods Limited and Isobar North America, a full-service digital marketing agency and Aegis Media Group company, announced today they will work together to enhance the company’s internal and external Web properties. McCain selected Isobar after conducting a formal review process, which included four competing agencies. The planning and discovery phase of the project is already underway, and the companies expect the projects to be completed by mid-year.

“We believe our digital initiatives will have a profound impact on the way we are perceived and engaged within the marketplace,” said Susan Rogers, Vice President of Global Communications for McCain. “To help us realize our goals, we sought a partner who values our brand and culture, understands the challenges and opportunities of being a global organization and has an advanced knowledge of the digital world. Isobar demonstrated all of this, while also pushing our team to recognize some exciting opportunities available to us.”

The Isobar work will be led out of the agency’s Toronto office, while leveraging the broad range of expertise across the firm’s global footprint.
“We have a fantastic opportunity here to drive deeper connections between the McCain brand and its key internal and external audiences,” said Isobar Vice President of Strategy Robert Simon. “The collective McCain/Isobar team feels a tremendous sense of common purpose in pushing forth a digital strategy that is the right fit for who McCain is today and where it’s going tomorrow, and we’re already off to a great start.”

“McCain is a great brand, grasping the opportunity to develop deeper more powerful relationships with its customers through digital communication,” said Nigel Morris, CEO of Aegis Media. “We are looking forward to partnering with them through Isobar to meet that potential.”

Want to see some of the most stellar creative executions in digital? Then don’t miss Evan Gerber at ad:tech San Francisco on Wednesday, April 21st, where Evan and a panel of experts will showcase killer campaigns and demonstrate how you can apply these successful strategies to your own digital marketing efforts. Register for the Full Conference or Premium pass as Evan’s special guest with code: SPKRGUEST and get 25% off the online price.

We’re proud to announce that Paul Irish, a senior consultant on Molecular’s emerging interactions team, has joined the jQuery Developer Relations Team.  Run by a distributed group of volunteers, the jQuery Project is dedicated to making jQuery the best JavaScript library possible.  

Paul joined the jQuery team to help produce videos for the 14 Days of jQuery and to move the API documentation to its new home for the 1.4 release. As a member of the Developer Relations team, Paul will be responsible for ensuring that the expectations of developers are being met in jQuery itself, and helping the core team to communicate clearly and effectively. 

Paul has been an active member of the jQuery community for 3 years, participating in and administrating the jQuery IRC channels and frequently blogging about jQuery and its functionality. He is also a frequent speaker at jQuery events, and the co-creator of the yayQuery podcast. 

Congratulations, Paul!

Want to learn more about the jQuery project? Leave your comments and questions for Paul in the comments section below.

It’s finally here. miCoach has launched in the U.S. and is on sale here for the first time. Get yours now! It’s been a long time coming after three years of working on this project. The screen below shows what the adidas.com USA home page looked like today. Just below that is the newly designed miCoach homepage to coincide with this launch and some new branding/campaign work. Awesome work everybody!

Also, some really nice words about our site design on the FAST COMPANY web site today. These words are music to my ears and illustrate that all of our hard work has really paid off in creating a rich yet easy to use experience. This is much, much harder than it sounds.

• “The Web site, which was created by adidas along with Molecular, does not miss a step–it’s intuitive, fun to use, and keeps pace with almost everything a runner needs.”
• “The Web interface coupled with these devices is often where they trip over their laces, but not in this instance. The miCoach site is easy to navigate, and includes just about everything you need in order to track and improve your running.”
• “The Adidas miCoach Pacer is the most full-featured and enjoyable personal training device on the market.”

Click here to read the full article.

[Originally published on Ricardo Salema's blog.]

Interactive Game Designed to Engage and Entertain Fans, Help Team Gain Strategic Insight into Increasingly Important Facebook Fan Base 

Famed NBA franchise The Boston Celtics (www.celtics.com) has teamed up with Molecular to launch a first-of-its-kind interactive Facebook application for fans. The application, called “3-Point Play”, is part of the team’s broader interactive marketing strategy, which aims to harness and draw insight from the enthusiasm of 430,000+ Celtics fans participating in the team’s massive Facebook community (http://facebook.com/celtics). 

How the Celtics’ Facebook 3-Point Play works:

• Fans compete against their Facebook friends and Celtics fans from around the world, challenging each other to accurately predict the statistical output of their favorite players each game by Points, Rebounds and Assists
• Prizes are awarded throughout the season, with top winners competing for highly-coveted playoff tickets
• 3-Point Play is ready to tip off, launching on the Celtics’ Facebook page ahead of the regular season opener on October 27 against the Cleveland Cavaliers
• As fans make their picks, the Celtics glean greater insight into their online fans’ behaviors and preferences

Molecular’s goals in creating 3-Point Play were, first, to create an online experience that would resonate with fans and keep them engaged throughout the season, and second, to design a marketing tool that would help the Celtics get to know their Facebook fans even better, allowing them to create a more relevant and compelling marketing strategy for this community of digital consumers.  3-Point Play is the newest component of the team’s growing menu of digital media offerings, which include the team’s official Twitter feed (@Celtics has 20,000+ followers), its official YouTube page (http://youtube.com/bostonceltics), and GameTime Live, a first-of-its-kind in the NBA interactive game-tracking and blogging application found exclusively on Celtics.com.

Play Celtics 3-Point Play now! Get your picks in for tonight’s game and compete against your Facebook friends for Celtics prizes like tickets, jerseys and more!

On our way to lunch today we had a sighting that makes the average geek excited: a Google Maps car, live, in the flesh. These cars are deployed by Google to document the street view imagery on its maps. They also collect geospatial data. It is not the most nondescript article to travel with.

Parked outside a Friendly’s diner, a huge tower carrying telemetry and photography equipmentis installed atop the car.

Data collection equipment inside the car

Driver side view of the car featuring monitor, keyboard

As you can see, a long, methodical road-trip necessitates gummy candy and lots of music.

The data collection computer is stored in the car's trunk

Wireless data uplink using a Verizon data connector.

Definitely does not seem like the cushiest gig, but hey, it’s a tough economy.