Adidas fires up its largest ad campaign ever

Adidas today launched what it's describing as its "largest marketing campaign in history," packed with enough pro athletes, pop stars and adrenaline overload to finally put it on par with heavy-spending competitors Nike and Reebok. (UPDATE: Commenter rightly points out that Adidas owns Reebok, which I have to say I didn't know.) The "All Adidas" campaign was created by Montreal agency Sid Lee, which was named global lead for the Adidas brand in 2010. The campaign's 60-second anthem spot, shown below (with two print executions featured after the jump), includes Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls, singer Katy Perry, mainstream rapper B.o.B., soccer stars David Beckham and Lionel Messi, plus a whole mess of skateboarders recognizable only to people who own skateboards. It's an impressive cast, sure, but is going big really the smart route for Adidas to take in a field already crowded with powerhouse brands? In other words, wouldn't it better if the ads seemed more like Adidas trying to be Adidas and less like Sid Lee trying to be Wieden + Kennedy? 

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Filed under Adidas, Footwear, Griner, Sid Lee
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Microdunk in these Twitter basketball shoes

Shoe designer Brass Monki has gone from custom-designing Super Mario and Bob Marley shoes to something even more embarrassing: Internet-themed sneakers. He's put together some Nike basketball shoes featuring the Firefox and Twitter logos, and Adidas hinted (or threatened, depending on your point of view) last year that they were planning something similar—showing off some Twitter and Facebook concept shoes. These are supposed to be for "geeks," but geeks are too busy biting the heads off chickens in carnival sideshows to tweet regularly, so I'm assuming they mean nerds. They're off base either way, because all the nerds I know display their nerd plumage through anime and webcomic merchandise. These shoes look like what their cat-lady aunt buys them for Christmas after hearing they like the Internet.

Filed under Brass Monki, Footwear, Kiefaber, Nike, Social media
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Yes, this is Kenneth Cole's day in a nutshell

Ken definitely needs a stiff drink and a long soak in the tub. You would not want to be walking in his shoes today. UPDATE Brian Morrissey adds: Cole is now like Mubarak. The social-media masses are not content with his mealy-mouthed apology. They do not have a leader as such, but Josh Spear, sushi lover, world-traveler and partner at Undercurrent, is humbly offering his services to deliver the rabble's demands to Cole. See below: He must hoof it to Egypt.

Filed under Controversy, Footwear, Kenneth Cole, Nudd
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Egyptians actually want Kenneth Cole shoes

Finally. The philosopher/shoe salesman Kenneth Cole has weighed in on the Egypt uprising. The Great Man finds an angle nobody else thought of when he cheekily interprets the Cairo "uproar" as a clamoring for Kenneth Cole's Spring Collection, which features such revolutionary garb as the 2011 Sundance Film Festival vest. Funny stuff! Cole was already a walking case study of why megalomaniac CEOs shouldn't moonlight as ad copywriters. He's now becoming the poster boy for why you should keep those same characters off Twitter. Needless to say, his banter isn't going over so hot with the tweeting masses. The whole fiasco has already spawned a mocking Twitter account, @kennethcolePR. UPDATE: Cole has removed the tweet and offers this apology on Facebook: "I apologize to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. I've dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate." The first reply to his apology sets the tone for most of the others: "You are an asshole! No excuses."

Filed under Footwear, Kenneth Cole, Morrissey
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Retailers pulling out over shoe's sperm logo

Do you wake up in the morning wishing you could wear shoes with a picture of a sperm prominently displayed on them? Well, now, with Gravity Defyer sneakers, you can! The Web site refers to the sperm logo as the "Slick Seed of Life Logo," and says it's there "because it's cool!" As you can see from the full-page advertisement posted after the jump, wearing these shoes is like pouring an energy drink on your feet. At least, I'm assuming the can (also covered in sperm pictures) that's splashing liquid on the shoe is supposed to be an energy drink. In a press release, company officials explain how, despite a couple of retail partners who've pulled out due to the logo, they intend to keep it: "Our logo is deliberate. … There's no shame, there's pride," they write. In my mind, there's a big gap between not being embarrassed by sperm and wanting to have it all over my shoes.

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Filed under Cullers, Footwear, Gravity Defyer
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Diesel's space sneaker kicks Assland's ass

Diesel's ass-themed advertising continues with this really quite distasteful "Assland" spot, which, after Ace Ventura and Assy McGee and Mr. McMahon's Ass, doesn't add anything new to the talking-butt ouvre except crisper animation. Which isn't much of a bragging point.

Filed under Butts, Diesel, Footwear, Kiefaber, Santo
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Shoe-loving giantesses maraud through city

If you're like me, you've probably wondered what would happen if skyscraper-sized fashion models were let loose in a modern metropolis. Thanks to AMV BBDO and Clarks shoes, now we know. The women "stand tall" (that's the tagline) against the skyline. They strut, preen, lounge across multiple lanes of traffic, use concrete canyons as catwalks and even do some pre-run stretching to Shawn Lee's hypnotic but grating power anthem "Kiss the Sky." It's visually engaging, but frankly, I expected more. Excuse me, ladies, if you wouldn't mind ... trample those pedestrians! Gnaw the power-lines! Cat fight, Japanese-monster style! Pull up your massive tops and flash the cube jockeys on the 57th floor! Pole dance with an office tower! Work it, ladies!

Filed under BBDO, Clarks, Europe, Footwear, Gianatasio
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Diesel never met a butt it didn't want to kick

Yesterday we posted the weird giant-shoe-chases-giant-ass video for Diesel sneakers. Here are more videos from that campaign, all variations on the same theme: If a butt is there, it might as well be kicked. Three videos, plus yesterday's, after the jump. Agency is Santo. UPDATE: There's also a host of new "Be stupid" print/OOH ads, including one with a butt-eating theme. Go to town. 

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Filed under Butts, Diesel, Footwear, Nudd, Santo
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Diesel sneakers tenderly kick a serious butt

AdFreak's Butts tag is going to be sore by the end of the week. The latest insane assmercial to rear its ugly head is the one posted below, released this week by Diesel on its Facebook page to promote its sneakers. It shows a shoe-car hunting down an ass-car in a remote desert chase scene. Eventually, the ass is cornered and is subjected to a swift kick. The pair then ride off together into the sunset, as onscreen copy reads: "I feel I wasn't made for running, but to kick you tender till the end of time. Yours, Diesel Sneaker." Agency: unknown as yet, although it sure smells like something Shackleton would do, given its work for Diesel helmets. Via The Denver Egotist. UPDATE: This is part of a broad new Diesel sneakers campaign that appears to be entirely ass-themed. Also, the agency is reportedly Santo, the Argentine shop with offices in London.

Filed under Butts, Diesel, Footwear, Nudd, Santo
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How scared of Kenny Powers was K-Swiss?

Time's NewsFeed blog has an interview with Danny McBride, aka Kenny Powers, about how the K-Swiss campaign with the obnoxious Eastbound & Down character came to be—in particular, the hilarious Funny or Die video below. Asked if K-Swiss was worried about Kenny's filthy mouth, McBride replies: "The whole time we were shooting it, me and Jody [Hill] just kept looking at each other and were just like, what? The head of K-Swiss was there and there were all these marketing people. And we're shooting this stuff, and we're like, 'What the hell? They're still letting us do this?' We had one thing with Steve Little (who plays Kenny's friend Stevie Janowski) on the video on Funny or Die. There was a whole run from Steve Little where he just went on an improv rant and was like, 'K-Swiss needs Kenny Powers! Kenny Powers doesn't need K-Swiss! Who wears K-Swiss? I'd rather put my foot in a pile of dog shit than one of these shoes!' And you're just sitting there, and you're like, Steve—the whole company is sitting behind the monitors. You're taking it too far!" Read more excerpts here. The full interview will be posted on Friday.

Filed under Footwear, K-Swiss, Nudd
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Has Foot Locker ever visited a high school?

Foot Locker's "It's a sneaker thing" campaign from SapientNitro in New York is mildly funny but nothing really to write home about. The creative director on the campaign says the ads show "situations that high school kids go through every single day." Really? Nude models in high-school art classes? Maybe in a progressive district. In a second spot, posted after the jump, a guy calls a girl a "butter shoes," as in "Everything's hot but her shoes." Let me just say, for the record, that no teenager in the history of anything has dismissed an attractive girl as a "butter shoes." Not even once. Aside from that, the spots are pleasant enough. Behind-the-scenes video is also after the jump. Via Homadge.

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Filed under Foot Locker, Footwear, Kiefaber, Nitro
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Get your melodic feet in Nike musical shoes

Wieden + Kennedy's Tokyo office teamed with Japanese hip-hop artists Hifana for this clip, released a few months ago, in which Nike sneakers are tricked out as musical instruments. The shoes were wired through a digital system and bent to produce what sounds like electronic distortion in a bad Moby song. Which is every Moby song, by the way. There's also a making-of video, posted after the jump. It took an engineering team and lots of Macbooks and software development to make the shoes sing. NASA didn't use this much technology to send men to the moon. I kept expecting someone to crack a joke about "sole music," but if the subtitles are accurate, the artists and crew showed amazing restraint.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

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Filed under Footwear, Gianatasio, Japan, Nike, Wieden + Kennedy
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Walking-on-water viral fools foolish reporter

The video below, which has gotten more than 2 million views on YouTube since late April, shows a bunch of sporty guys in Europe running on water—supposedly pioneering a fun new pastime called "liquid mountaineering." Of course, it's fake. It's an ad for Hi-Tec water-resistant running shoes. Mostly you can tell this by all the Hi-Tec logos that appear in every shot. Unfortunately, a D.C. television reporter was convinced it was real. Check out his report after the jump. Via Gawker.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

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Filed under Footwear, Hi-Tec, Nudd
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Foot Locker encourages sneaker spankings

Spanking used to be more common in ads than it is today. SapientNitro brings it back in this (of course) European spot for Foot Locker, in which a guy gets sneaker-spanked by a sexy girl. It's pretty amusing, especially when he calls out the brand names of the shoes. I know just how he feels, because a nice spanking session really revs me up for a day of blogging. OUCH! That's right. … Hey, I never said stop.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Europe, Foot Locker, Footwear, Gianatasio, Nitro
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Crocs obsessed with rubbing your tired feet

Cramer-Krasselt's new campaign for Crocs is intended to whimsically tout the footwear brand's Croslite comfort technology. It threatens to cross into kinky fetishistic territory, however, by presenting smiley-faced, oh-so-willing anthropomorphic shoes who hide in your closet and oh-so-lovingly caress your feet with their tiny plastic hands. Oh yeah, work those toes! The tagline is, "Feel the love." I'm tossing out my Jordans the second I get home—all they do is pinch my heels and smell. OK, full disclosure: I wear Keds. But they sure never gave me a sweet lovin' massage.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Cramer-Krasselt, Crocs, Footwear, Gianatasio
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Asics shoes handy for fleeing haunted areas

Last week, a cat took a freaky trip in a Friskies ad. Now, it's a human's turn, as an Asics jogger takes a bizarre early-morning run in this spot by Amsterdam Partners. I think it's supposed to suggest the holistic harmony of the sport (as well as the high-performance technical design details of the shoe), but mostly it's just creepy. The quaalude-ambient music and ghostly lighting lend a horror-movie aspect to the proceedings, and the sneaker parts hanging like glass shards in the air don't help. Even the deer seems menacing. And that butterfly looks like Mothra. The jogger is wise to speed up before the fauna eats him alive.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Amsterdam Partners, Asics, Footwear, Gianatasio
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Adidas nerds out with 'Star Wars' collection

Adidas is tapping into the nerd market with a line of Star Wars-inspired sneakers and apparel, kicked off by this ad, in which celebrities (including David Beckham, Snoop Dogg and Daft Punk) and suspiciously attractive young people breakdance and play stickball in a weird red mist. I dare anyone in this ad to wear one of those Darth Vader cape/jacket tragedies in public. (It's all well and good in the commercial, when no one—including the viewer—can see anything.) According to The Frisky, not everything in this line is a wolf shirt in the making. Darth Vader's tough, all-black sneakers are pretty cool, and I can see people wearing Yoda walking slippers as house shoes. Still, I won't be satisfied until I own a Jabba the Hutt beanbag chair.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Filed under Adidas, Apparel, Footwear, Kiefaber, Star Wars
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Nap with the Payless kitties on Black Friday

Martin/Williams encourages Payless customers to sleep in on Black Friday, and still get discounts via a special text coupon, in this video, which features an annoying "You're getting sleepy" hypnotist voiceover and, oddly, dozens of snoozing kittens. "We've decided to turn the Black Friday tradition on its ear this year and do it in a manner that's really fun and totally unique," says Tom Moudry, the agency's CEO and chief creative officer. I'm sure plenty of consumers will love the yawning kitties. Still, the clip drones on for a long 1:35, and some viewers might nod off before its conclusion. Given the run-of-the-mill stuff they sell at Payless, however, even if folks slip into catnaps and neglect to take advantage of the offer, they won't be missing much.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Previously on AdFreak:
Take the stairway to heaven with Payless

Filed under Footwear, Gianatasio, Martin/Williams, Payless
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DDB presents an 'asstounding' Reebok spot

Kudos to M&C Saatchi DDB Chicago for billing its new butt-centric Reebok spots as "asstounding." The shop doesn't monkey around with what it's after in promoting the EasyTone, a sneaker Reebok has targeted at the baby-got-back crowd for its leg- and caboose-toning capabilities. The spot above, called "Wandering Eye," stars a shapely spokeswoman who can't get the camera operator from coming in for close-ups of her backyard, although she seems quite flattered by it. The inspired tagline: "Better legs and a better butt with every step." Reebok is running the spots on broadcast and cable TV over the next four weeks, marking the brand's first major TV effort in two years. What a way to come back. UPDATE: DDB, not M&C Saatchi, did the creative here. M&C is the PR agency on the campaign.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Previously on AdFreak:
Reebok packs them in for 'Migration' spot
Reebok unsurprised by Pats' imperfection
Run easy, and spell poorly, with Reebok

Filed under Butts, Footwear, Morrissey, Reebok
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Jordan's son to wear Nikes on Adidas team

Michael Jordan's son Marcus, a freshman guard at the University of Central Florida, wants to wear his dad's Nike Air Jordan sneakers. In Chemistry 101, that's probably fine. On the court, however, it's a problem, as Adidas has a six-year, $3 million contract with the university to outfit its athletes across all of its sports. "It's a level of importance with the Jordan Brand and my family," the player says. "It's no disrespect to Adidas. I have a high level of respect for adidas, but I'm going to be wearing Jordan shoes. I'm wearing the Adidas uniform and all my other UCF gear is Adidas, but the shoes are going to be Jordan Brand." According to the Associated Press, the university is working with Adidas to determine "how this unique set of circumstances will work for both parties." Given the inordinate amount of free publicity the "controversy" is generating for both brands, I'd say those circumstances are working just fine so far. UPDATE: It looks like Adidas is pulling its $3 million from UCF over the sneaker flap. Maybe Mike Sr. will step up to the line and foot the bill. If the school offers to rename its athletic center after MJ, the surly egomaniac might even be a sport and pony up $3 million per foot. Well, not Pony exactly...

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Adidas, Controversy, Footwear, Gianatasio, Nike
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New Balance running in the wrong direction

As a runner, I'm regularly amused by advertisers' attempts to tap into the zeitgeist of an activity that can at times border on the masochistic. Now, New Balance is writing another sorry chapter in the history of running-shoe advertising. The brand's new spot has a guy running around with feet coming out of his forehead. You see, it's a crazy metaphor for runners thinking of their achy feet all the time, rather than losing themselves in the simple pleasures of a jog. An ER doc fixes things with a brand-new pair of New Balance shoes. This is pretty disappointing from New Balance and BBDO. Their previous "Love/Hate Anthem" nicely captured the complexity of an activity that's addictive yet features inevitable discomfort and the struggle against the understandable impulse to stay put. It would have been nicer to see New Balance take the production budget for the silly feet-on-forehead spot and pour it into "Chasing Kimbia," a Web documentary series the brand has sponsored that puts the spotlight on the often-anonymous lives of great Kenyan runners. That's stuff that will connect more with runners than obtuse metaphors.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Filed under BBDO, Footwear, Freaky, Morrissey, New Balance
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Timberland workboots out to kick major ass

Timberland Pro workboots get biz-ay in Mullen's "Stay on your feet" campaign, an effort designed not just to sell shoes but to help blue-collar workers find employment by providing job listings and such. The Web site has a "Test the Boot" section, where the steel-toed shoes are shown lifting weights, juggling tires, withstanding electric shocks and so on. They seem indefatigable, so maybe employers should just hire the boots and forget about the folks wearing them. (They'd save on benefits, though I suppose tongues would wag.) Workers made redundant by their own Timberlands will still be better off than the guy who gets chased by the wildlife in the brand's other recent campaign, by Leagas Delaney. Maybe they could apply to be forest rangers, preferably armed with rifles to control the marauding animal populations, lest they overrun our great cities.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Previously on AdFreak:
Keep grizzlies at bay with your Timberlands
Nature would prefer you wear Timberlands

Filed under Footwear, Gianatasio, Mullen, Timberland
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Grand Shoes are for big feet, not small dogs

A playful pooch does not fare well in this clip from McCann Sweden for Grand Shoes, an online retailer that specializes in large sizes. You can't see it that well, but he gets clobbered by the flying sneaker, which is probably at least a size 18. Considering the way dogs have misbehaved in some recent ads—mauling cell-phone consumers and leaving their waste around for kids to ingest—I'd say Fido had it coming. Still, I'm sure he'll quickly recover, and be treated like royalty back at home, wrapped in the comforting embrace of a canine Snuggie. Via Ads of the World.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Previously on AdFreak:
Ads for Bianco shoes promise foot-orgasms
DSW's shoes are lonely and looking for love

Filed under Animals, Europe, Footwear, Gianatasio, Grand Shoes, McCann Erickson
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Mutant animal freaks always wear Converse

It's been a while—probably going back to Kodak's dual-cyclops dog—since we've seen a good mutated animal in advertising. Converse gives us a whole host of them—a lion-gerbil, a dog-boy, a sheep-cat and others—in a new Web and wild-postings campaign by (fittingly enough) ad agency Anomaly. The ads send you to ConverseOne.com, where you can customize your shoes (though not any animals) by mixing and matching parts. The Skittles sheep-boys should try to get in on this action. Customized sneakers are getting to be a big deal, with help from Melanie Oudin, who famously made her own pink-and-yellow Adidas sneakers for the U.S. Open.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

See also:
Mutant dog helps sell new Kodak camera
Converse celebrates Chuck Taylors in song

Filed under Animals, Anomaly, Converse, Footwear, Nudd
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DSW's shoes are lonely and looking for love

Earlier today we showed you some oversexed feet without shoes, so why not follow up with some lovelorn shoes without feet? Discount-shoe warehouse DSW just launched the "Speed Dating" spot above, which shows the shadier sides of rubber-sole romance. A second ad is posted below, though it lacks the comedy combo of incest, criminality and cross-dressing.

—Posted by David Griner

Filed under DSW, Footwear, Griner
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