Major League Soccer's official uniform supplier, adidas, recently launched a special section of its web site specifically focused on America's top league. The all-new adidas.com/MLS, a flashy combination of photography, graphics and video clips, gives visitors a chance to get to know Major League Soccer's players and teams, while also highlighting the adidas products that are used in the league by the star players featured.
"We were very excited about the product we were doing with MLS, being on all 12 teams and having our brand out there," said Ajay Date, communications manager for adidas Soccer. "We also thought we had a great looking product and a great product story to tell, so first and foremost, we want to get that product out there and let people see it. But we also felt that from an MLS standpoint we had great player stories to tell and great city and team stories to tell."
Each team has its own page on the site with information about the team, its history and outlook for 2006. Additionally, one key player is featured for each squad, some of whom have contributed video bites to enhance the experience.
"Those are the players that we have relationships with already," said Date. "We have relationships with players in every market, every team, every city and based on those relationships we chose those players to represent us."
The latest adidas gear is readily on display, including every MLS jersey and state-of-the-art equipment such as the +F50 TUNIT shoe. Each player site also has a link where fans can purchase the all-new MLS jerseys worn this year by all 12 teams from MLSgear.com.
An ad banner has been placed on the front page of adidas.com/soccer, allowing soccer fans across the world to have easy access to the new MLS site. Further promotional plans will soon be implemented.
"We will do banner advertising on our online media assets. Our TV spots already promote people to the adidas.com/soccer site," said Date. "We'll also promote to our mailing lists for soccer so all of our youth soccer mailing lists and our adidas.com/soccer mailing lists will be promoting the site as well."
The MLS site is in line with the global marketing campaign for adidas this year, +10.
"+10 is all about individual brilliance within a team concept. These players that we've chosen all represent that team pretty well," said Date. "It's also our global brand concept for soccer so we felt like it had a very strong place in MLS."
While the site has only recently launched, changes and updates are continuously going to be made.
"We launched a smaller version last month and the new version that just launched has a lot of video content on it. As we move forward we hope to add a lot more video content to it and also make it the home of what we hope to be a program called MLS Pictures going forward," said Date. "You'll constantly see more content from a video standpoint being added to the site, as well as any new product stories around MLS."
Jonathan Nierman is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
