2 weeks before '14 World Cup, adidas launched its biggest communication campaign. adidas wanted a PR activation that affirmed it is still the global football leader, France’s favorite brand and illustrate the “all in or nothing” campaign with a strong message. The agency proposed that adidas France affirms this position through a powerful, surprising demonstration defining the campaign through a bold and daring launching party #allinornothing.

On May 26th, 2014, adidas France launches its campaign by completely demolishing the symbol of the darkest episode of French football: "the Knysna bus of shame" that the 2010 French team refused to leave.

The demolishment took place in the biggest scrap yards in the Parisian suburb, in front of media, influencers and a happy few. The demolishing party was the perfect stunt to make the French ready for '14 WC!

The main objectives here were to leverage the “all in or nothing” campaign with a dominant media message during the FIFA 2014 World Cup and to balance media “shockwaves” through PR storytelling.

In order to reach these PR objectives, adidas and its agency used a big stunt to increase the image of adidas as part of a wider strategy : the "all in or nothing" campaign.

The event took place in the biggest scrap yards in the Parisian suburb, the night of May, 26.

The first part of the evening was meant to "prepare" the PR audience for the bus demolition via an industrial scenography and projection of adidas ads.

As an introduction of the destruction, a short movie was projected to remember the darkest period of the French football history.

The climax of the party was reached when the audience was asked to get out not knowing what will happen : the demolition, live, of the Knysna bus. This demonstration illustrated the claim and also the fact that adidas, like every French person, wanted to restart from scratch.

The campaign almost ran according to the original plan, initially we wanted to bring back the real bus but facing the authorities refusal, the agency had to recreate the very same bus.

150 journalists and bloggers present at the event

400 happy few: former football players, opinions leaders, famous journalists...

300 clippings: 20 TV, 20 radios and 11 international

More than 213 million contacts generated (154M web - 37M radio - 19M TV - 2M print)

Feedbacks: 88% of positive feedback - 7% of neutral feedback and 5% of negative feedback.

4500 publications on social networks and 70% of positive feedback.

2 twitter trending topics.

Visibility of the campaign : x8 versus average campaign.

The destroyed bus was then transformed into a piece of art by an artist and sold at auction