This is the last Summer Olympic Games that Adidas is sponsoring, so it's going big with its messaging around London 2012.
The official outfitter of Team Great Britain today reported that it has sold $100 million of 2012 Olympic merchandise to date, no doubt helped by its high-profile guest designer, Stella McCartney. As the Telegraph notes, "As well as making the official London 2012 sports apparel merchandise, Adidas provides the kit for hosts Team GB and it is providing 3m items of clothing for the athletes to wear in the Olympic village and for volunteers."
Despite being targeted by rival Nike with its faux London 2012 campaign and sweatshop activists, the sportswear giant is keeping on track.
This week the company launched the next chapter of its “adidas is all in” global branding platform with a new campaign featuring with singer Nicki Minaj, designer Jeremy Scott, rappers Big Sean, 2NE1, Kids These Days and NBA star Derrick Rose ‘representing their crew’ in a new push for Adidas Originals. (The Twitter hashtags: #alloriginals and #represent.)
“This generation is always looking for a chance to go all in to their own beat; an opportunity to show the world their passions and their talents,” said Adidas CMO Hermann Deininger in a press release. “This campaign builds on the desire for self-expression, and we are enabling our consumers to share with us and the world their creativity, and what originality means to them.”
The signature spot, directed by Melina Matsoukas, features Minaj’s song “Masquerade” (from her 2012 album "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded") as its anthem. “I am a fan of the Adidas brand and have been for a very long time. I believe they represent what I represent, which is inspiration and fun and working hard as well,” Minaj told Rolling Stone.
“When Adidas came to me, they mentioned the Olympics," she added. "They mentioned maybe having a performance at the Olympics, and I just put my brain into the mindframe of, "What does a champion feel like? What is the inner conversation of a champion?" And I just started by saying "Feel the beat of the drum" and talking about being Number One, all those things that go through your brain sometimes when you're feeling like you're at the crossroads between continuing and giving up.”
“Masquerade” is about feeling inspired to win and to never give up and I feel like the Adidas campaign, that's what it's really about: giving people hope and you know, that's what I wanted to convey in the song,” Minaj stated.
Montreal-based agency Sid Lee created and produced this campaign as well as last year’s debut of the “adidas is all in” campaign, continued in March 2012 with CLIMACOOL and adidas Running (a good excuse to get David Beckham running, and then photo-bombing).
Building on the global campaign, fans during the Olympics are being invited via Facebook to share their most “all in” moments to win one of 41 pairs of red 2012 performance shoes.
Adidas will also customize a new pair of sneakers every day via miadidas, a project with two artists working real-time from the adidas Olympic Lounge at the London Olympics site, creating shoes embodying each day’s best ‘all in’ moments. (Even though the London Games organizers seem to have a problem distinguishing street artists from vandals.)
Leveraging its tie-in with the London Olympic Games, Adidas chose the eve of the July 27th opening ceremonies to promote its first one-piece upper performance running shoe, the Adizero primeknit, featuring "groundbreaking" seamless and sustainable engineering technology — and an answer to Nike's Flyknit technology.
Furthering its commitment to sustainable manufacturing, Adidas also launched its waterless DryDye technology (tagline: "Every drop counts") this week:
Using 50% less energy and 50% fewer chemicals, adidas is manufacturing 50,000 DryDye t-shirts and saving 1,250,000 liters of water, promising that’s just the beginning of more products made with sustainable engineering. “It takes a whole Mediterranean Sea every two years to dye the clothes we wear — that's 25 liters of water for a single t-shirt. adidas DryDye shirts with fabrics from the Yeh Group are dyed using ZERO water.”
The brand is also touting its new adipure collection, a trilogy in motion for the serious runner: adipure Motion, the first step in barefoot running, adipure Gazelle for intermediates and the adipure Adapt for the most advanced natural runner.
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