With a striking move in their creative marketing tonality, the adidas Sport Heritage division underlines its key objective for 2005: to maintain the brand’s credibility while making the Trefoil experience accessible to a broader consumer base.
This new direction is part of a pro-active fashion distribution strategy and is supported by an advertising campaign that Celebrates Originality.
To realize the new campaign, adidas Global Creative Director Michael Michalsky partnered up with Stephen Gan, one of the most experienced individuals in the fashion industry. Together they selected Karl Lagerfeld to be the photographer, who translated the Celebrate Originality concept of the campaign in seven double and single-page visuals that speak High Energy and High Style. The shooting took place at Karl Lagerfeld’s studio in Paris on November 12th and 13th, 2004.
The first Spring/Summer 2005 ads will break globally in February 2005 issues of key lifestyle and fashion publications such as Lodown, Punto H and I-D as well as magazines such as GQ and Elle.
Until now adidas Originals styles have been distributed to selected doors only. As a reaction to the growing demand from fashion accounts, the level of product availability in that distribution channel will be slightly broadened. All adidas Originals marketing communication efforts will evolve around three pillars in 2005: to energize, globalize and contemporize adidas Originals.
QUOTES
Hermann Deininger, Head of the adidas Sport Heritage Division: “Over the last three years we have built a solid base for adidas Originals – a foundation grounded on our heritage and built on the celebration of our authenticity. Our distribution and marketing approach has been very careful as we did not want to abuse the immense potential of the Trefoil, not only cherished by us but also by our target consumer. We have never overloaded the market with our Originals line and that is something we will never do. Contemporizing the brand, though, means changing the perspective and looking towards the future by extending our dialogue with the street fashion distribution channels.”
Uli Becker, Head of adidas Global Communications: “In past years, adidas Originals focused their campaigns on true product stories to underline the history and uniqueness of the Trefoil brand. We are confident that the attitude and style delivered through the new campaign are a positive answer to our consumers’ demands. As with our distribution, our communication approach is going to be carefully broadened too, reaching down to the Style Leaders and Style Adopters in the street fashion community.”
Michael Michalsky, adidas Global Creative Director: “To creatively uplift the whole division without compromising the brand's credibility and authenticity is so exciting. From clean simple sport styles we work towards collections that prove that adidas Originals is the ultimate aspirational street fashion label.”
Stephen Gan, Founder of Visionaire and Creative Director and Editor-in-Chief of V Magazine: "The idea of bringing a fashion edge to one of the most recognized global brands in the world was probably the biggest challenge we could have been approached with. Michael's idea of doing this with Karl Lagerfeld was even more enticing. Lagerfeld accepted enthusiastically the idea as he recognized immediately the potential of adidas Originals as the top-end street fashion brand.”
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