• by Karl Greenberg , February 14, 2008

Adidas is launching a global campaign, the first, for its Adidas Originals lifestyle brand.

Via Amsterdam180, it is based in that city and rallies round a series Web-based videos of people in the avant garde of art, music and athletics.

The first effort, launching this week, spotlights the man who founded Adidas, Adi Dassler, in his workshop in Germany. This is also the first time in the company's 60-year history that its founder has been brought to the fore in Adidas advertising.

The campaign is supported by print, TV, in-cinema and Web ads leading consumers to the microsite within adidas.com.

Pierre Wendling, director of digital, explains that the agency didn't employ digital animation to resurrect Dassler. Rather, Wendling and his team recreated Dassler's office in miniature, down to scale model versions of his desk, furniture, tools, and accessories, with ambient street sounds, and radio playing songs of the day in the background. Dassler himself appears as a Claymation figure, intricately sculpted down to the glue residue between his fingers, as he scratches his jaw and ponders a soccer shoe.

"We want to tell you simple story of Adi Dassler, that was the goal of the site, to be immersive, and keep it simple," says Wendling.

Dario Nucci, senior creative director at the agency, says one of the goals is to differentiate Adidas Originals from Adidas' performance division, whose tag line is "Impossible is Nothing." The originals tend to have a retro feel. The logo is not the three-stripe symbol for Adidas Performance, but the Adidas trefoil logo introduced in 1971.

He adds that the first of five films won't be product-focused, while the rest will, each touting the new Originals apparel line. "What we wanted to do is have a campaign that was congratulating people who think differently--people who think in their own way or are cultural style leaders."

The Dassler film presages the direction of the campaign toward contemporary themes by moving forward through history from the perspective of pictures on Dassler's walls that become videos within the video.

As a German-accent voiceover narrates, Dassler begins with early track shoes, soccer shoes, and Ali's boxing shoe. Then, Adidas becomes a lifestyle brand worn by the likes of Bob Marley and skateboarders, and rockers. Finally, he peers out the window, an older man, to see a kid strolling down the street in Adidas casual wear.

One of the forthcoming films in the series, "Sons of the City," will tout a range of Adidas Originals product while spotlighting reggae from Jamaica; the Motown sound; Memphis, and New Orleans.

Nucci explains that that film, or part of it, features Detroit DJ Theo Parrish sampling ambient Detroit sounds and creating a track.

Wendling says each film ends with the Adidas trefoil transmogrifying into a video sphere on which films about the featured artists and athletes are arrayed, with the "Celebrate Originality" theme.