• March 22, 2006
  • Posted by Marc

adidas gets it right with adicolor

If you’re a regular reader of the Wooster website, then you’ve followed our ongoing critiques and commentary on how brands either get it right or get it entirely wrong when they attempt to assimilate graffiti and street art into their campaigns.

Not too long ago we took Sony PSP to task for launching an ill-conceived and deceptive campaign that showed how brands should “not” attempt to do these things.

So today, we thought we’d show you what we think is the other side of the coin - how companies can “get it right” with a clever, authentic campaign that gets all the details right. 

We love the new campaign that adidas launched recently in Germany for adicolor. 

Here’s how it works:

First, adidas put up a series of mostly white flyerposters - branded with the adidas logo - that subtley encouraged people to tag the billboard and basically fuck it up.

addi2.jpg

addi3.jpg

But then, days later, they came back to those same ads and placed another poster over it. The new poster features the adidas adicolor show, now with the original tags from the previous poster incorporated into the show design.

addi4.jpg

addi5.jpg

Of all the recent street campaigns we’ve seen lately, this is our favorite one by far.  It’s extremely clever, but most importanly it fits the brand perfectly. It takes advantage of the street to the fullest. And most of all, it turns the tables in an absolutely brilliant way that is extremely impressive. 

We’re sure that not everyone will agree with us, but whoever came up with this idea is really fuckin’ smart.

You can see more photos here.  Thanks also to Ed in London for sending us the info.