Try on some adidas Climacools in France & get kidnapped

I’m a huge fans of adidas because of the fact that their offering is so versatile. To be fair though, the brand is probably most well known for the next gen running shoes that they produce. However, in France, the brand was struggling to reach its target demographic, young people ages 14-19. adidas learned that this group simply didn’t like to run (at times I can relate)- so much so that they weren’t even interested in trying-on running shoes, much less purchasing them and using them.

What adidas did know was that this target demographic loved action-packed movies, so with the help of Sid Lee Paris, adidas created a campaign to give the young people of France a reason to run– by making them the stars of their very own Mission Impossible-esque adventure.

In the ‘Ready To Run’ campaign, anyone in France who tried on the adidas Climacool running shoe was kidnapped. Scary-looking ous would snatch a youth from the store, throwing them into a van. As the van sped off, the kids was given a set of earphones and briefed on a mission. They get a mission to complete by running through the city over the course of an hour while getting instructions through the earphones from World judo champion Teddy Riner.

Once the mission is accepted, the youth is given a pair of Climacool running shoes and dropped on the middle of the street, where Riner starts to bark instructions on how to complete the tasks in the mission. Tasks include anything from delivering pizzas to a man in a helicopter to skydiving.

As you can imagine, everyone wanted to try on a pair with adidas experiencing a 500% jump in Climacools tried on during the campaign. I think it’s an awesome campaign. Come on South African advertisers, I know you’ve got some ideas like this.

Watch a video of the campaign below:

SID LEE | adidas Climacool – Ready to Run from sidlee on Vimeo.

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