Inphantry | Ebay Santa Sneaker

An A/R-powered sneaker drop that delivered free kicks to sneakerheads across the country, reinventing drop culture for the holidays.

CLIENT

eBay

Experience Design | Creative Technology | Augmented Reality

eBay
Santa Sneaker Drop

We created the eBay Santa Sneaker Drop, a holiday-themed A/R experience that turned a sneaker giveaway into a game. Players activated the drop through their mobile browser, watched gifts fall down a virtual chimney, and had multiple chances to win free kicks. No app download. Just a playful, accessible drop anyone could join.

Our Solution

While most drops rely on limitation, eBay’s advantage is scale. As the world’s largest sneaker resale marketplace, eBay has unmatched inventory. By flipping scarcity on its head, eBay could create a drop that felt bigger, more inclusive, and more exciting than anything the sneaker community had seen.

Insight

Sneaker drops are dominated by brands that control both the product and the retail experience. Lines, lotteries, and extreme scarcity drive hype, leaving most sneakerheads empty-handed. eBay needed to prove it could host the biggest sneaker drop of the holidays, despite not having stores or manufacturing its own sneakers.

Challenge

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Sneaker drops have become predictable. Limited quantities, lottery mechanics, and frustration are built into the model. For eBay, the opportunity wasn’t just to participate in drop culture, but to reinvent it in a way that felt generous, accessible, and true to the brand’s role in the sneaker ecosystem.

By leaning into the holidays, humor, and gamification, Santa Sneaker Drop reframed what a drop could be. It wasn’t about beating the bots or racing the clock. It was about showing up, playing along, and enjoying the experience, whether you won or not.

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The experience was conceived, designed, and built on an accelerated timeline. The challenge was not just speed, but quality. It needed to feel polished, responsive, and exciting, while running entirely in the mobile browser without requiring an app download.

Custom 3D assets, interactive A/R mechanics, and a lightweight web-based architecture allowed the experience to scale quickly and perform reliably under heavy traffic. Players could enter from anywhere, choose where their virtual fireplace appeared, and immediately engage with the drop.

The result was an experience that felt accessible and premium at the same time, lowering friction while maintaining the excitement sneakerheads expect from a major release.

Development

Santa Sneaker Drop delivered immediate, measurable impact at scale. Over the course of just three days, the experience generated over 3 million entries, with players returning repeatedly and nearly all participants using all five attempts per day.

The drop sparked significant social conversation, generating over 875,000 social engagements during the activation window. Earned media coverage spread across sneaker culture, sports, retail, and mainstream outlets, including Sole Collector, Footwear News, Nice Kicks, Yahoo Sports, ABC News, and Good Morning America. In total, the campaign drove more than 2 billion earned impressions in just a few days.

The work was recognized across the industry for both its creative and technical execution, earning multiple wins at the Shorty Awards, including honors for Retail & E-Commerce, Physical & Digital Convergence, and Mobile, along with shortlist recognition at The One Show. More importantly, the activation reintroduced eBay to sneakerheads as a brand that can be trusted for authentic and hard to find inventory and is culturally fluent in their world.