Product and Marketing
Under the adidas brand, we have been designing, engineering, and marketing world-class sports products for 75 years. Through developing innovative products and telling inspiring stories, we create only the best for the athlete. By doing so, we continue to build brand equity as well as trust of our partners, which in turn enables us to capitalize on structural growth opportunities in the sporting goods industry.
The adidas brand
The adidas brand has a long history and deep-rooted connection with sport. We believe that through sport, we have the power to change lives. This is our purpose, and we live it every day by expanding the limits of human possibilities. To remain one of the most recognized and iconic brands in the world, on and off the field of play, we need to drive and maintain our credibility in sport. For us as the adidas brand, this means launching groundbreaking innovations to continuously deliver the best for the athlete, while also enabling a broader culture that is born from it. Being committed to inclusivity, we ensure that all athletes and consumers are considered and supported by our product assortment. SEE ESRS S4 CONSUMERS AND END USERS
Product born from sport
Product is at the core of everything we do. Our Performance products are built from sport and worn for sport, helping our athletes to perform at their best in a broad range of sports, represented by our famous 3-Bar logo. We serve all athletes, in major participation sports like football, running, and training, as well as in credibility sports, including outdoor, golf, and tennis, among many others. On the Lifestyle side, adidas Originals is motivated by the collective memory of sports and represents brand classics as well as new visionary designs. The Trefoil – adidas Originals’ iconic signifier – celebrates products that connect with culture, leveraging our archive and celebrating our partnerships. In addition, Sportswear is built as an expansion from the playing field to courtside. It is born from sport and worn for style. Sportswear offers our consumers everyday products that redefine comfort, versatility, and aesthetics.
With a 75-year history of groundbreaking innovation in sports, we have built an enormously rich archive – the collective memory of our brand. Some memorable moments include:
1949
‘Adolf Dassler adidas Sportschuhfabrik’ is registered in the small town of Herzogenaurach, Germany, and founder Adi Dassler launches a sports shoe featuring the soon-to-become-famous 3- Stripes, marking the humble beginnings of a global success story.
1954
adidas makes its mark on the football pitch, with innovative screw-in studs on lightweight football boots helping the German national football team beat Hungary in the 1954 World Cup final.
1967
The iconic Franz Beckenbauer tracksuit celebrates its debut as the first piece of apparel from the brand. To this day, iterations of our tracksuits resonate with consumers around the globe.
1970
After unlocking footwear and apparel, we deliver the Telstar as our first official match ball for the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico. This marks the beginning of a successful strategic partnership, with the brand providing innovative official match balls for every FIFA World Cup ever since.
1972
To enhance brand visibility, the Trefoil is introduced as a new logo featuring three leaf-shaped foils. In the same year, the Samba as we know it today launches as a fast-paced and agile football shoe, before later turning into a lifestyle icon.
1973
A tennis shoe developed in the 1960s is rebranded in honor of one of the biggest sports stars of the time: Stan Smith. The silhouette is synonymous with timeless style and has become an everyday staple of modern footwear.
1986
Initially designed for basketball, US-based hip-hop group Run-D.M.C. turn the Superstar shoe into a streetwear icon with the release of the song ‘My Adidas’.
1994
Marking the next chapter in our rich football history, the Predator boot is born. While the rippled rubber fins remain a distinctive feature, continued iterations ensure the franchise remains a go-to for the world’s top players and amateurs alike.
2001
adidas becomes the pioneer in the industry to introduce a new lifestyle segment, focusing on sports-inspired streetwear. In the years to come, new partnerships with Yohji Yamamoto (2001), Stella McCartney (2002), and Pharrell Williams (2014) are born along with exciting labels, such as Y-3 (2003).
2013
Boost hits the market and the running industry is changed forever. With the Ultraboost franchise launch in 2015, the responsive cushioning technology is brought into an elegant silhouette, dissolving the boundaries between performance and lifestyle running.
2019
Leveraging years of comprehensive research, we introduce a new sustainability concept called Futurecraft.Loop, a completely recyclable performance shoe. This marks another critical milestone in our ambition to continuously push industry-wide boundaries in terms of sustainability.
2022
In collaboration with Gucci, we build on the incredible legacy of the Gazelle since 1966, resulting in one of our most sought-after releases. Featuring premium materials, a kaleidoscope of colors, and merging the iconic Trefoil and Gucci emblems, these ‘Made in Italy’ Gazelles firmly reestablish the silhouette around the world.
2023
Continuing to provide only the best for the athlete, we unveil the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1, our lightest-ever running shoe. Weighing in at 138 grams, the shoe is 40% lighter than any other shoe adidas has ever created and enables our athletes to set new personal bests and break multiple records.
Product franchises as lighthouses for our brand
Within our wide and deep product range, product franchises are our most iconic symbols of sport and culture as well as the lighthouses of our brand. In Performance, globally recognized footwear franchises include Predator and F50 in Football, Adizero and Ultraboost in Running, Dropset in Training, Agravic in Outdoor, Barricade in Tennis, and AE1 in Basketball. In the Lifestyle category, they include perennial footwear icons such as Samba, Gazelle, Handball Spezial, Campus, Stan Smith, and Superstar.
Footwear is key to winning consumer mindshare. With our rich archive, access to fundamental athlete insights as well as technological innovation, we have been pushing and continue to push boundaries in the athletic footwear industry. This is reflected in our category mix: In 2024, footwear had the highest share of net sales by product category at 59% (2023: 57%), followed by apparel at 35% (2023: 36%), and accessories and gear at 6% (2023: 7%).
Net sales share by product category
We leverage the footwear-led brand heat and expand it into our apparel as well as accessories and gear business. On the apparel side, we aim to build and grow franchises such as the Firebird range, the Z.N.E. collection, Tiro pants, and MyShelter jackets. In apparel, too, our franchises represent the very best of adidas, influencing not only sport but also the culture born from it while contributing to building our brand equity. Through uncompromised functionality, iconic designs, and unique stories, they have the potential to be iterated over time to preserve desirability.
Global brand with locally relevant product range
Brand desirability might look and feel different in different parts of the world. As a global brand with a local mindset, we therefore ensure that our product is tailored to local tastes and trends. While product franchises and our seasonal spring/summer and fall/winter ranges are developed on a global basis, our markets are empowered to adapt the assortment and go-to-market to their local needs. Through dedicated local design, development, sourcing, and marketing resources, we enable our market teams to cater to the consumers in their respective market.
Besides the global creation engine at our headquarters in Herzogenaurach, we have invested into creation capabilities in Portland and Los Angeles for North America, in Shanghai for Greater China, and Tokyo for Japan, among others. This set-up enables us to leverage our archive and the strength of a global brand, while ensuring relevance for a broad array of local consumer preferences. SEE MARKETS AND SALES CHANNELS
Product innovation and success stories
We have a long heritage of innovation and constantly strive to provide athletes with the best by creating high-performance and competitive products. Technology platforms such as Boost, Lightstrike, and Clima are proof points of our broader approach to innovation and act as enablers to define new successful athlete stories through best-in-class product execution. We collaborate with athletes and consumers, universities, innovative companies, governments, and research organizations to further understand performance requirements. Based on these insights, we invest in manufacturing techniques and new technologies with the aim to address the challenges athletes experience.
In the past year, we continued to serve all athletes with innovative technologies, materials, and sustainable concepts built into our Performance products:
We also continued to create sports-inspired product stories that resonate with consumers in Lifestyle, leveraging our rich archive and roster of brand partners:
Holistic approach to marketing investments
Our marketing activities – alongside product creation, innovation, and collaborations – are an important constituent for creating brand desirability and winning the consumer. adidas is focused on generating inspirational and innovative concepts that drive consumer advocacy, build brand equity, and drive demand for our products. With partner and brand marketing activities extending through digital platforms, advertising, point-of-sale, and grassroots activations, we create one powerful narrative. The ambition is to have a fully connected marketing funnel, from grabbing consumer attention to driving consideration when consumers are in the buying phase, down to conversion at the point of sale. SEE ESRS S4 CONSUMERS AND END USERS
We are active across five dimensions with bespoke marketing objectives:
- Brand campaigns: create visibility, unaided awareness, and establish a brand point of view.
- Elevated franchises: drive global desire and demand for our product franchises.
- Category activation: strengthen sport and cultural credibility by sharpening category propositions.
- Horizontal brand stories: ensure visibility and engagement for brand priorities across categories.
- Commercial conversion: drive conversion at the point of sale, both in-store and online.
Marketing plans anchored in our ‘You Got This’ brand campaign
From building brand awareness and brand heat all the way down to deliberate point-of-sale experiences, our brand marketing plans showcase a variety of activations at all levels of the marketing funnel, with our global brand campaign ‘You Got This’ being at the very center of it. You Got This was born from consumer insights. In conversations with our consumers, we repeatedly heard that pressure makes everything feel impossible and that sport stops being fun when negative pressure comes from all angles. The most vocalized point was the disconnect from sport due to the expectations of others.
In response, we crafted and adopted You Got This as our brand message to help people believe they can disarm negative pressure and engage with sport on their terms. We want to bring them back to where they first fell in love with sport, like their own backyard, reminding them that sport can be played without pressure. You Got This was launched in February 2024 – featuring the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Trinity Rodman, Lionel Messi, Linda Caicedo, Jude Bellingham, Anthony Edwards, Rohit Sharma and the New Zealand Rugby All Blacks – and will see continued iterations and chapters throughout 2025 and beyond.
The latest chapter of our brand campaign focuses on the ‘Plus One Effect’, highlighting the influence each of us has in uplifting others in sport. It is about changing the game, the tone, and the outcome for someone else, transforming self-doubt to self-belief and pressure to joy. We all need someone to make us believe.
Impactful and effective marketing initiatives
The summer of sports in 2024 was a fantastic opportunity to showcase how our athletes harness their inner self-belief and confidence to overcome pressure during high-stakes moments in their respective disciplines. Accordingly, we launched several You Got This chapters around major sports events, with stories narrated by our athletes, as a reminder to all – from amateur to elite level – of how integral self-belief is. For us, being a global brand with a local mindset also means telling such stories in a locally relevant way. Our teams therefore created market-specific iterations of our brand campaign chapters and hosted additional events to resonate best with local communities.
- EURO/Copa: We amplified the success of our teams at the UEFA EURO and CONMEBOL Copa América football tournaments through the launch of the second chapter of our You Got This brand campaign: Stars including Jude Bellingham and Lionel Messi shared their experience on pressure and how to overcome it. Simultaneously, we drove elevated brand visibility with activations such as our ‘Home of adidas Football’ in Berlin – a fully immersive hub with public viewing, creative studios, exhibitions, game boxes, and five-a-side football pitches for our consumers.
- Olympics/Paralympics: Against the backdrop of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the third chapter of our You Got This brand campaign highlighted the importance of self-belief: Athletes at the top of the game shared their mindset to encourage the next generation. The campaign matched the launch of our comprehensive Athlete Pack, a footwear collection equipping athletes across 41 different disciplines, which was also made available at our newly opened Home of Sport flagship store on the Champs-Elysées. To round up the event experience, we celebrated Olympic medal wins with our athlete partners at our adidas house in Paris.
- Move for the Planet: For the second time, we called on athletes at every level across the world to track their physical activity across a variety of sports. Almost 230 million minutes of activity were tracked in the adidas Running app globally, with adidas donating € 1.5 million to make sports facilities more resilient to extreme weather conditions and to provide sustainability education tools to a number of local communities.
- Road to Records: For the fourth edition of Road to Records, we gathered 120 world-class athletes for a unique running event at our headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany. Our athletes secured one new world record, two under 20 records, nine national records, and stimulated incredible energy at our World of Sports. The excitement was also visible in our adidas Runners’ community – who remotely participated across 60 cities – as well as around 200 retail partners and our employees who also joined in on this extraordinary experience.
Brand partner portfolio rooted in sport
2024 was a fantastic year for sport. Many athletes were able to further improve their outstanding performances and inspire spectators all over the world. For others, it was the year in which they were able to shine on the big stage for the first time. As a sports brand, we are grateful for the trust these athletes place in us, and we will support them unconditionally throughout all stages of their journey.
We constantly strive to further extend our sizeable roster of athletes and partners. The latest signings include, among others, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 team, the New South Wales Rugby League, the French Rugby Federation, the Ukrainian Association of Football, Texas Tech University, Aitana Bonmatí, Lamine Yamal, and Travis Hunter. In addition, we were able to extend our partnerships with UEFA Champions League, Major League Soccer (MLS), Indiana University, the Argentine Football Association, the Mexican Football Federation, the German Olympic Committee (Team D), the British Olympic Association (Team GB), and Noah Lyles.
With this, we will continue to bring our products to the biggest stages in the world through partners like:
- Major teams, federations, leagues, and events: Football: national teams of Algeria, Argentina, Belgium, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Mexico, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Sweden. Top clubs such as Arsenal F.C., F.C. Bayern Munich, Juventus Turin, Manchester United, Real Madrid, A.S. Roma, and all clubs of the Major League Soccer (MLS). Basketball: US-American universities such as University of Kansas. Running: Ethiopian Athletics Federation (EAF), French Athletics Federation (FFA), Berlin Marathon, and Boston Marathon. Other sports: Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 team, India cricket team, German Olympic Committee (Team D), British Olympic Association (Team GB), Dutch field hockey team, the New Zealand All Blacks, and the China national volleyball team.
- High-profile athletes and individuals: Football stars Selma Bacha, Jude Bellingham, Florian Wirtz, Pedri, Dani Olmo, Linda Caicedo, Kadidiatou Diani, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Ousmane Dembélé, Paulo Dybala, Emiliano Martínez, Rafael Leão, Mapi León, Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal, Lindsey Horan, Manuel Neuer, Lena Oberdorf, Guro Reiten, Declan Rice, Trinity Rodman, Aitana Bonmatí, Alessia Russo, Mo Salah, Son Heung-min, Zinedine Zidane and Jürgen Klopp. Track and field athletes Anna Hall, Grant Holloway, Steven Gardiner, Noah Lyles, Shaunae Miller-Uibo, Gout Gout, marathon runner Tigist Assefa, as well as triathlete Patrick Lange. Basketball stars Aliyah Boston, Zia Cooke, Anthony Edwards, James Harden, Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell, Jalen Green, Jalen Williams, and Candace Parker. American football players Patrick Mahomes, Travis Hunter, Garrett Wilson, and Micah Parsons. Tennis players Karolína Muchová, Jessica Pegula, Elina Svitolina-Monfils, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Xinyu Wang, Caroline Wozniacki, and Alexander Zverev. Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin. Skateboarders Tyshawn Jones and Nora Vasconcellos. Golf players Rose Zhang and Ludvig Aberg.
- Cultural marketing partners: Anitta, Baby Monster, Bad Bunny, Tate McRae, Grace Wales Bonner, Edison Chen, Caroline Daur, HoYeon Jung, Jennie Kim (Blackpink), Jerry Lorenzo, Léna Mahfouf (Léna Situations), Deepika Padukone, Stormzy, Pusha T, Pharrell Williams, and Dingyun Zhang.