Getting campaigns ready for special events can be tricky, but for the recent US National Basketball playoffs, sports apparel company Reebok and agency Inside Mobile took just 8 days to get a mobile campaign together.


The campaign included a WAP site, mobile videos, and a very innovative use of special ringtones. See agoradesign.it all the details here.

The playoff was between the Boston Celtics and the LA Lakers, and the new campaign by Reebok starred one of Boston’s top players, Rajon Rondo. The campaign turned his last name, “Rondo”, into a verb, meaning to move quickly, evasively or to steal the ball. So whenever he made a great move in the game, people said “You’ve been Rondo’d”.

What made the campaign most interesting was the innovative use of ringtones, which you’ll read more about below.

The Mobile Site

The campaign was promoted on the Reebok website, in various mobile media and of course also at the actual playoff stadiums. It only ran a fairly short time, but it had a very quick uptake.

Reebok constructed a mobile site just for this campaign, that provided information about the star, wallpaper, a special ringtone, and of course information about Reebok products.

There was also a history of the 11 times that the two teams, the Boston Celtics and the LA Lakers had met in the NBA finals.

And there were special video’s that built on the fun use of the verb “Rondo”. A couple of them can be seen below.

The Ringtone

One thing which made this campaign special was the creative use of the ringtone. Many campaigns have provided consumers or fans with customized ringtones – but in this case, Reebok would call the fans’ phones during a game when Rondo made a great play. So after a great play, hundreds of phones in the arena would all ring at the same time with the same “You’ve been Rondo’d” ringtone!

You can listen to the ringtone here:

Download link

And as an added benefit, fans that answered the call got to hear messages from other famous Boston Celtic basketball players.

Of course this was an optional part of the campaign – here is the “Opt-in” page.

Campaign Results

The campaign ran for a very short time, just during the playoff series. In the first 72 hours of the campaign, almost 25,000 pieces of mobile content were downloaded from the mobile site, including over 10,000 ringtones. And almost 3,000 fans signed up to get the automated phone calls during the games.

Dusan Hamlin, joint managing director at Inside Mobile explains, “In just eight days and with the support of key agencies such as Minick, Zugara and Isobar, Inside Mobile has managed to create a mobile marketing strategy and concept (You Got Rondo’d) that has caught the imagination of the client, the athlete’s management, the Boston Celtics, the NBA and most importantly, the Reebok target market”.

Marcus Spurrell, head of global digital at Reebok adds, “Mobile is an increasingly important part of our marketing strategy and the innovative mechanics around the Rondo campaign have further validated our commitment to this channel.”