The Creatives Room

Adidas's Greatest Ads

Adidas has built a creative legacy that draws from sport, music, and street culture in equal measure. 'Impossible is Nothing' was one of the great athlete platform campaigns of the 2000s. The brand's collaborations with musicians and designers have consistently produced advertising that belongs to culture rather than merely commenting on it. And campaigns like 'Here to Create' positioned Adidas as a brand for people who make things, not just people who wear things.

The campaigns in this collection

1. Mark Gonzales x Adidas - Adidas

   adidas TERREX worked with the skateboarding pioneer and artist Mark Gonzales on the Shmoofoil Collection, and the film follows him and the clothes across two landscapes that should have nothing to do with each other: the rooftops of New York and the summits of the Dolomites.

2. POP Trading Company: How Big Is Your Pop Right Now? - Adidas · 2023

   To launch the adidas x Pop Trading Company collection, the film invents the Pop Training Company, a straight-faced fictional organisation offering skateboard lessons. The question in the title is delivered as though it were a genuine diagnostic, and the joke carries the collaboration while pro skate

3. Never on Pause - Adidas · 2020

   Adidas "Never on Pause": a headphoned city runner powering through the streets embodies relentless, always-on training - movement that never stops.

4. What You Don't See - Adidas · 2017

   Adidas "What You Don't See": a straining, emotional athlete foregrounds the hidden effort, doubt and sacrifice behind performance - the work fans never witness.

5. 3MC - Adidas · 2019

   A film for Adidas Skateboarding built around Patrick Rogalski and his Rocco lifestyle, shot through the streets of Berlin to launch the 3MC shoe. The skater's own scene and attitude carry the product rather than a staged demo.

6. Frida Karlsson - Adidas

   A portrait of Swedish cross-country skier Frida Karlsson and how fast it happened for her: one of the country's most promising juniors, she made her World Cup debut in 2019 and, a week later, took three medals at the World Championships in Seefeld. The film sits with that near-vertical rise rather t

7. Originals Real Madrid - Adidas

   Adidas Originals x Real Madrid: a footballer in kit off the pitch fuses on-field heritage with off-field street style - the club's icons as culture, not just sport.

8. Adidas Dresses The Game - Adidas · 2026

   Adidas "Adidas Dresses The Game". By staging spontaneous play between the windows of a tower block, the film insists sport lives wherever people improvise it, not just in stadiums. Adidas dresses the game of ordinary neighbourhoods, claiming the everyday street as its true home turf.

9. The Zone - Adidas · TBWA\Amsterdam · 2021

   Adidas "The Zone". Paring everything back to one grainy, blacked-out portrait, the film visualises the private mental state an athlete enters before they perform - focus as a place you go alone. Adidas aligns itself with that inner threshold rather than the outward spectacle of sport.

10. Wake Up - Adidas · Louder · 2017

    Adidas "Wake Up". The lone early riser above a sleeping city casts training as a daily act of discipline - being in motion while everyone else is still in bed. Adidas builds the brand around that quiet, self-driven commitment that precedes any visible win.

11. The Original - Adidas

    Adidas "The Original": a euphoric crowd lifts one of their own, celebrating originality and belonging - the brand carried by the culture and community it started.

12. Brand Expression: Kick - Adidas

    An Adidas football brand film: a lone figure silhouetted in a floodlit goalmouth captures the pressure, solitude and drama of the game - the player alone with the moment.

13. Create your adicolor - adidas · TBWA\Barcelona · 2015

    Ad for adidas adicolor. Dipping the shoe fully in one colour dramatises the campaign's promise - a blank canvas sneaker for wearers to drench in whatever colour they choose.

14. 3 Bar Superstar - Adidas · 2023

    For 50 years of the adidas Superstar, and in homage to the shoe's three bars, the brand cut three bars out of a new Kano track and left the gap open - then turned phones into studio microphones so anyone could record their own three bars into the hole in the song, with pop-up booths in London, Manch

15. Original Forever - adidas · droga5 · 2026

    adidas Originals and Oasis launched Original Forever around a real 26-piece collection tied to the band's 2025 reunion, anchored by a three-minute film set to a new arrangement of 'Live Forever' in which a crowd surfer rides through time across the band's defining moments, from early-90s clubs to Kn

16. Supernova Adaptive - adidas · 2026

    Six years of development with Chris Nikic - the first person with Down syndrome to finish an Ironman - alongside Paralympians, wheelchair users and inclusive-design specialists, produced the Supernova Rise 3 Adaptive: a hands-free stiffened heel, low-pressure lacing, magnetic toggle, wider forefoot,

17. José +10 - Adidas · 180heartbeats + JvM · 2006

    Two boys pick teams from the world's greatest footballers on a dusty pitch - and the legends actually turn up to play. The insight is that the universal childhood ritual of picking sides is where football fandom is formed, and every fan has mentally drafted their dream XI. The strategic problem was

18. Road to Lisbon 2004 - Impossible is Nothing - Adidas · 180 amsterdam · 2024

    Thirteen of the world's best footballers ride customised scooters across Europe to Euro 2004, playing wherever they stop - forests, lay-bys, a whole Portuguese town - shot as a road movie rather than a sports ad. The insight is that the tournament everyone is advertising against is the destination,

19. Runner 321 - Adidas · FCB Canada · 2022

    Adidas noticed that no professional running team in the world had ever signed an athlete with Down syndrome, and launched 'Runner 321' - reserving bib number 321 (for trisomy 21) at major marathons for a Down syndrome runner, and publicly challenging teams to sign one. The insight is that inclusion

20. SUPERSTAR - Adidas · mcgarrybowen · 2015

    Adidas relaunched its 1969 Superstar to a generation raised on validation-chasing and influencer fame by having its biggest names - Pharrell Williams, David Beckham, Rita Ora, Damian Lillard - question stardom itself, each concluding that if being a superstar means performing for an audience, then '

Why this collection is worth studying

Adidas advertising is worth studying for how the brand navigates its dual identity - heritage sports performance brand and global fashion icon - without appearing to contradict itself. The campaigns that do this best are the ones rooted in authentic subcultures: the Originals work, the campaign with Pharrell, the collaborations with Yeezy before the separation. Authenticity, it turns out, is a product strategy as much as a creative one.

See also

• Best Sports Advertising
• Nike's Greatest Ads