The launch of the adidas Football Tumblr

Football fans the world over are eagerly looking forward to Euro 2012, and it’s no different here at We Are Social. As well as closely following the fortunes of the 10 national teams represented by people in our offices around Europe, there’s also an adidas project we’re extremely excited about.

As you might have read in Ad Age, Adotas or Marketing Week, last week adidas launched a new social media platform: the adidas Football Tumblr.

This is particularly big news as adidas is one of the first brands to take advantage of Tumblr’s new sponsorship opportunities, meaning that adidas Football is a featured Tumblr on the Spotlight page and posts are appearing as sponsored posts in the Radar rotation on users’ Dashboards.

The Tumblr’s focus is firmly on visually engaging football content, from brilliant football lifestyle photography to the kind of behind-the-scenes shots that adidas can provide better than anyone else. It’s all about showcasing the very best of the beautiful game and giving fans the chance to share and comment on that content with their followers and friends, in a way that’s just not possible on any other platform.

A group of both established and up and coming football and lifestyle influencers will be collaborating on the content production on an ongoing basis, many of whom already have large followings in their own right.

To kick things off EPL Talk podcast presenter Laurence McKenna will be producing a daily audio show from Poland and Ukraine every morning, recapping the UEFA Euro 2012 experience – both on and off the pitch – from the previous day. He’ll also be teaming up with photographer and Hypebeast contributor, Ravi Sidhu, to get out and about with the fans at the tournament, bringing the real Euro 2012 to Tumblr Dashboards all over the world. And there’s plenty more lined up for the final stages, including a collaboration with our very own Ollie O’s BNTL.

On top of the work of our collaborators on the ground in Poland and Ukraine, the Tumblr page will be adidas’s platform for sharing the best football content, from traditional Tumblr favourites like animated GIFs and cinemagraphs to bleeding edge visuals produced by some of the industry’s most exciting techniques and talents such as The OMC, who will be shooting i-SPEED imagery especially for the new page later in the tournament.

The adidas Football Tumblr launched with the video above, produced with motion graphics editor Thiago Maia and featuring everything that will make the page truly different: adidas’ products, history, players and love of football. As well as appearances from David Beckham, Franz Beckenbauer and Leo Messi, the video stars a host of football stars welcoming fans to the page.

What we’re most excited about though is adidas Football engaging with Tumblr’s massive global community for the first time (whose demographics are spot on for the brand), with the full support of Tumblr itself. As Tumblr’s Derek Gottfrid says:

This is the type of innovative marketing effort that we’re proud to be at the heart of, and we can’t wait to show it off in the Tumblr Radar and the Tumblr Spotlight.