Adidas Originals revamped their 5th Avenue flagship store in New York City to showcase their new campaign 1000 Back. arch covered the Originals trilogy project featuring three short films in a previous post. Curious to see how they are executing the campaign message In The Field, a quick visit delivered the intel.
Check out the video highlights
From the sidewalk
Visible from 5th Avenue is a large display featuring the Samba, Superstar, and Gazelle shoes. The tagline, “We gave the world an Original. You gave us a thousand back.” establishes Adidas’s legacy and global influence while acknowledging its consumers’ role in this journey.
Inside the store
Giant video walls play their new brand films, a continuation of their rejuvenated multimedia strategy. A long table studded with Polaroid photos of loyal Adidas customers forms a mosaic representing the brand’s community.
The walls of the store also showcase the campaign’s striking photography by Chadwick Tyler. Tyler’s work captures the raw portraiture of the brand’s celebrity spokespeople including Jenna Ortega, Pusha T, and David Beckham. This reinforces the brand’s relevance across generations.
Designated sections of the store are allocated to the Samba, Superstar, and Gazelle shoes, with each product having its own distinct display. The distinct shade of blue, associated with Adidas Originals, is present throughout the store, especially in the apparel section.
The highlight of the experience
One of the standout features is the interactive photo booth. This installation encourages Adidas customers to become a part of the Originals campaign by taking their photo and inserting it into a campaign layout. These photos are streamed to a 5th avenue window display. Though straightforward in its tech—using an iPad to capture images and stream them to a TV display—the concept is the most innovative aspect of the activation. However, there are areas where the execution could have been more considered. The photo output was not sized appropriately for the vertical screen. A quick design fix would have made this visualization more impactful.
Inconsistency at other Adidas locations
We stopped in to two other Adidas stores in the city to gauge consistency of the in-store execution.
The Adidas Brand Center store on West Houston St. (a sprawling 2-floor space with an unmissable exterior that sits at a key Lower Manhattan intersection) had the Originals campaign video looping in the store window display along with other unrelated brand content. The southern facing exterior was used a massive billboard for the celebrity campaign photography. From the street, you might think there was a large Originals activation awaiting inside this store. However, we were surprised to see this location had virtually no trace of the campaign inside the store.
In the trendsetting SoHo neighborhood, Adidas Originals store on Spring St. had campaign photography in the window and the brand films looping in a staged area near the front of the store. This display lacked clear contextualization of the new campaign, falling short of the distinct messaging at the 5th avenue takeover, despite being the flagship for the Originals line.
Conclusion
Adidas 5th Avenue store clearly exhibits the spirit and key elements of their new campaign, from visual displays to interactive installations celebrating their customers. While this flagship store delivers campaign consistency, the lack of a significant presence at other prominent locations like the dedicated Originals store and massive West Houston St. Brand Center store raises questions about the holistic implementation of the campaign.
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