Page 188 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

New Media Sportscapes: Branding and the Internet • 177

Sport Web sites are often complex, multilayered, multimodal experiences. Web
sites are available to a global audience, but the geographical location of the Web site
user may affect the way he or she experiences the site. To analyse these Web sites,
therefore, it is necessary to consider the multiple navigation routes that may be avail-
able. The following analysis explores the multiple faces of the Adidas Web site.

Case Study: The Global Consciousness of the Adidas Web Site

The Adidas Web site is a globally conscious Web site presenting different multime-
dia experiences according to the geographical location of the user and the navigation
route the user chooses to follow. The Web site is clearly branded with the Adidas
brand name and three-stripe logo, which act as a constant frame for multimedia ac-
tivity to take place within. On reaching the home page, sounds and moving images
play immediately within the central frame. While some elements of the Web site
remain stable irrespective of the geographical location selected, this central multime-
dia experience changes by country, as chosen by the user (or automatically selected
for the user). Among the unchanging elements of the Web site’s home page is the
rollover hyperlink in the top right-hand corner, displaying the user’s country and the
invitation to ‘change location’, accompanied by a graphic world map. By following

ANALYSING ADIDAS.COM
Corporate Web sites, such as http://www.adidas.com, exhibit many of the multimedia and interac-
tive features that have been considered characteristic of new media. It is also a good example of
ephemerality—the content and organisation of the site constantly change as the site is updated. The
lack of permanence meant that our analysis needed to be undertaken on one day and required us to
take screenshots and download the constituent elements of the site that we wanted to reassemble
in case the site changed. We analysed the Web site on 3 December 2007.
To capture the communicative experience offered by the Adidas Websphere, we followed various
hypernarratives by clicking on the links to each individual country’s home page. We analysed the
common features of the Web sites, for example, corporate information and menus, and noted
the differences between the countries. On the day we analysed the Websphere, each country’s home
page contained a large, central image, often a video or animated sequence. The enormity of the
Websphere meant that we had to limit our analysis to following links to the home pages, exploring
the menu choices available there and following a hyperlink from the central image to the next pages.
On one occasion, this led us away from the Adidas site to YouTube. While the Adidas Web site has
changed its campaign, many of the videos can be found archived elsewhere on the Internet, so not
everything is lost when the site changes.
We noted the ways that the Websphere displayed multimodality, multivocality and multilinearity.
We considered the intertextuality that resulted from following the hypernarratives. This process en-
abled us to begin to conceptualise the pleasures and experiences presented to the user interacting
with different aspects of the Websphere associated with geographical locations around the world.