If you’re organizing a large-scale event, user-generated content is a proven winner to spread the message across social media. But at a recent soccer tournament in New York, adidas took things to the next level – developing a personalization strategy that helped their event live on through highly shareable video content.

At its Tango League competition for soccer creators, each of the 16 participating teams were tasked with filming themselves practicing on their home field, warming up at the venue, and competing in their matches. All the footage was shot using Cinebody, meaning it was automatically uploaded to the cloud for easy remote editing. And the eight teams judged to have shot the best footage – including Jersey Tekkerz, Dustbowl FC and Tango Wolves – received a customized, adidas-branded edit to share on their own social channels within just 48 hours of the final whistle.

How was this possible?

Adidas pre-built each of the eight videos in advance, choosing the music, developing the branding and designing the graphical transitions before a single second of footage was shot.

As footage started to arrive on the cloud, adidas quickly began to build the videos with real-time editing. Providing extra direction through push notifications ensured every aspect of each story was told.

And as editing occurred while the filming took place, adidas got a head start on content creation. When the award ceremony wrapped up, it didn’t take long for adidas to then distribute the personalized, branded and authentic edits to each of its top eight teams – who were already eager to share the videos across their social accounts.

This strategy enabled adidas to provide a complete activation from start to finish: a great match-day experience paired up with customized recap videos for the top competitors, enabling the event to live on digitally and providing the ultimate, personalized prize for the top filmers.

Could the authenticity of scalable user-generated content – and the personalization that comes with it – help your next event spread further than ever on social media?