Saturday, November 8, 2008

Hey Nike: Adidas is still on your tail

As far as I know, there’s no Mr. Nike. No one person in Beaverton, OR who’s given his heart and soul and name to a company, who thought up designs for his products and sketched possibilities and wrote entries in his journal that started with “The parcel of aviation gasoline and albatross feathers arrived today…I’m not certain of whether the winged chariot will fly, but then again, if I knew all the possibilities, there would be no point in trying.”

The guy who wrote that, according to a campaign from Lifelounge in Melbourne, was Adi Dassler, the man who started (with his brother Rudolf) the Adidas company.

“Adidas” has become a retronym for “All Day I Dream About Sports,” and this web campaign combines that retronym with Adi’s passion for design to showcase all kinds of crazy and wonderful possibilities in the world of athletic (ish) footwear.

Nike has kicked serious ass in the world of sports for what seems like forever, but Adidas has been nipping at their heels for years with really smart, fresh tactics like this website, including this extremely cool animated 3:00 ad featuring Adi’s story.



Adidas has something powerful with Mr. Dassler. They’d be wise to keep using him.

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