Legends Unite in Adidas World Cup Blockbuster

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The biggest global stage demands the biggest ads. With a reported budget of £50m and a superstar cast from Timothee Chalamet to Lionel Messi, adidas’ World Cup campaign is certainly that. But in the most important ways it’s also a very human-scale ad, celebrating the small street football games that even the greatest stars began with.

The ad, created by agency Lola USA, shows Chalamet putting together a team of three – Jude Bellingham, Lamine Yamal, and Trinity Rodman. This group will take on the “Backyard Legends”, a New York street football trio who have an unbeatable record dating back thirty years. And the star power doesn’t stop there. Lionel Messi and Bad Bunny turn up as spectators, and football legends Beckham, Zidane and Del Piero are de-aged into their younger selves as a previous set of challengers.

“Backyard Legends” is an extraordinary line-up of talent that goes beyond the standard “famous footballer” cast to bring in film and music stars that will resonate with its young target audience. And as well as the 5-minute, highly cinematic hero film, there’s a 60-second social video trailer built to work as an ad in its own right but also draw people into seeing the full thing.

That’s what we ran through our Test Your Ad Social platform, wanting to see how appealing and how sticky and attention-grabbing the ad is among its social native targets.

In a fast-scroll environment, social video ads often struggle for effectiveness. The average UK Social Video Star Rating (predicting long-term business impact) is a modest 2.3-Stars, and short-term Spike Rating and Brand Fluency are also only modest.

adidas beats the country norms on all three measures, with a 3.1-Star Rating and particularly strong performances in Spike Rating and overall Brand Fluency. And this is despite the ad not showing the full epic Backyard Legends story! Even as a teaser, this ad is strong and attention-grabbing enough to perform well among social media users in this toughest of channels.

Looking into the diagnostics gives us more idea of what the ad’s strengths are. The story is clearly gripping – by the 10-second mark the ad is getting above the norm attention scores – and viewers are intrigued by the range of stars on show. Prominent placings for the adidas logo make it the standout distinctive asset in the ad, mentioned by more than half our sample.

And one of the most positive signs for adidas comes in the demographic breakdowns, which are indicative (as they rely on small sample sizes) but directionally very useful parts of the report. These show that for the 18-34 and 35-54 agegroups this is a particularly effective ad. adidas’ investment in the kind of iconic figures social media users know and admire is a winning strategy.