Adi Dassler Responds In Kind

Last week I hipped you to Nike's outstanding ad campaign leading up to this summer's World Cup, Joga Bonito (by the way, there are 2 new ads up on the nikefootball site that are both great - one featuring Brasil in the locker room and one called "the gift of skill").

Well, Adidas are no slouches either. They had the coolest ad for Euro 2004 by a mile, featuring their stars Trezeguet, Zidane, Vieira, Cole, Kahn, Beckham, Raul, and more all travelling to Portugal (site of 2004) on their vespas.


"The Road To Lisbon" (click to play)

Adidas were rewarded when one of "their" teams, Greece, shocked the world and won the 2004 European Championships as a 150-1 shot, beating "Nike teams" Czech Republic in the semifinals and hosts Portugal (for the 2nd time) in the final.


Made Tasso, George, and the owners
of Athens Pizza in Decatur proud as hell

Now Adidas are back with a campaign called "+10", meaning you +10 others make a football team of 11. So far it looks like the ad campaign is two-pronged. One one hand, they have a series of ads where one of their stars is given 2-3 hours to recruit amateur players from their home country to play a match against another star from a rival country who has done the same. For example, Kaka recruits a bunch of Brasilians (Kaka +10) and Riquelme recruits a bunch of Argentines (Riquelme +10) to play each other. There are currently 7 sets of these ads: for each "rivalry" there are 2 ads - one showing the stars recruiting people on the streets and another showing their match. Pretty cool. These ads can be found here (flash required).

The 2nd prong is called The Impossible team, or Jose+10. It features 2 kids who choose teams for a pickup game in the street featuring all of the Adidas stars, and is cool as hell. Click on the pics below to view part 1 & 2.


Part 1: See Zidane & Platini
on the same team (click to play)



Part 2: the match (click to play)