Why Adidas Brand Design and Oliver were honored at The Drum Awards for Content 2021

The Oliver Adidas NAMBD team started small, launching with 17 people who were experts on the brand and would commit to handling the brand’s execution-level creative work across all digital channels.

Just a few months after standing the team up, COVID-19 forced everyone out of the office and into a new world of fully remote work. Adidas’ budgets for working with external agencies shrunk, and Oliver’s team quickly shifted from being an in-house production powerhouse to now taking on creative briefs, often with the expectation of concepting full productions and executing them under strict lockdown guidelines.

The response

Beginning in March, 2020, Oliver began expanding its scope and brought in dozens of talented creatives who were enthusiastic about winning over clients and ambitious enough to pursue innovative solutions to adidas’ new digital creative needs.

That spring, the team was tasked with creating the brand’s 2020 Pride toolkit. After conducting dozens of interviews and capturing content remotely, Brand Design’s work was displayed across all of adidas’ digital channels and adapted by over 30 markets worldwide.

Not long after, we were approached by new clients from the NCAA team at adidas. They needed a creative concept to celebrate an upcoming collaboration with eight universities and their flagship performance running shoe, the Ultraboost. We developed a “Dipped in Color” concept that championed the joy of wearing your favorite schools’ colors proudly, and it ended up becoming Adidas’ most successful members-only collection ever released.

Within months we were requested by clients who had heard of our ability to think big (even on a small budget) and were asked to help the brand develop its approach to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Following a tumultuous summer that changed the national conversation around American culture and politics, the brand wanted to contribute positively to the upcoming election by using its voice and influence to drive youth voter turnout.

With no firm guidelines in place and an open-ended request, we saw an opportunity to be stewards of the brand’s rebelliously optimistic motto: that through sport, we have the power to change lives.

A small team of creatives crafted the “You Create the Future” campaign—a thoughtful, encouraging, and engaging tone that was simple enough to be communicated quickly while leveraging adidas’ influence for maximum impact.

We celebrated the brand’s commitment to youth voter turnout that led them to closing their retail stores’ doors on election day—empowering both shoppers and employees to get out and vote—and drove home the message with the line, “There’s no drop more important than the one in the ballet box.”

Our creative concept was shared on all of the brand’s digital channels, including a homepage takeover. Beyoncé, Pharrell, and other adidas collaborators shared our messages on social media, and we soon earned over 200 million impressions and 500,000 engagements.

Most importantly, the U.S. saw record youth voter turnout in the presidential election, and adidas was able to thoughtfully and authentically engage itself in a way that truly resonated with its audience and beyond.

In March, 2021, the NCAA basketball tournament saw the women’s teams and players provided with significantly fewer on-site resources than the men’s teams. And the brand needed to react quickly.

Once again, Adidas wanted to contribute to the conversation authentically and gracefully. We were asked to design seeding kits and write a letter from Adidas to the women themselves, representing and speaking for the brand.

We designed collateral for 17 teams and over 400 athletes, shipped directly to them at the tournament and gifting them the latest Pharrell sneakers. From the shoeboxes to the notes tucked inside, Brand Design handled everything while showing genuine support and appreciation for the athletes as they continued to fight an uphill battle.

And we still weren’t done. When the brand was set to launch NFL superstar Patrick Mahomes’ signature apparel and shoe collection a few months later, we helped facilitate the entire process; from the initial shoot concepting, to the logo reveal and the eventual product launch, Brand Design touched everything.

The results

The launch was a huge success. To date, the Mahomes signature campaign has notched over 2.5 million views and 870,000 engagements on social media.

And we didn’t just concept some of the most visible campaigns for the brand over the last year. We continued to expand our ability to quickly execute, delivering over 1,200 unique assets a month.

Brand Design also worked closely with Adidas’ SEO team, overhauling their entire catalog of SEO content and launching the brand’s digital storytelling arm. We created a content hub of magnetic videos and articles featuring top-tier athletes, expert trainers, and world-class video production.

With just one art director, two copywriters and a single producer, our SEO editorial team has produced 36 remote shoots, resulting in 175 articles set to be published by the end of 2021.

Our trust with our clients has grown so strong that our team—after being stood up just a year and a half ago with 17 people—grew beyond its North American focus and used Oliver’s unique, global model to expand its scope worldwide. We now work with local teams in Mexico City to adapt our content to Adidas’ global markets.

With all the growth, we also prioritized diversity and inclusion, and this initiative extended beyond simply hiring a diverse team. Oliver put together its Change Board to actively build an anti-racist and pro-inclusive organization, hosting dozens of workshops to educate employees and facilitate difficult-yet-necessary conversations.

Throughout a difficult year, Oliver’s Adidas Brand Design team managed to avoid the rounds of layoffs that plagued the industry for much of 2020. We even grew by using our in-house model, helping to alleviate our clients’ budgetary restrictions while guiding them through an unpredictable, unplanned time that ended with a record year for revenue.

This entry was a winner at The Drum Awards for Content 2021. Click here to find out which of The Drum Awards are currently open for entry.