Adidas was founded on the belief that “sport has the power to change the world”. And that’s why, the brand is committed to tackling one of most invisible but pressing issues that transcends borders and cultures – ocean plastic pollution.

For years, Adidas has been working with Parley, transforming plastic bottles gathered from beaches into high performance sports gear including swimwear and running shoes. However, without a global call for change, no amount of plastic collected and upcycled were able to surpass the rate of pollution. Thereby in 2018, Adidas asked us to create an activation, and call upon the world to save the oceans.

The sheer number of brands jumping onto the sustainability bandwagon in recent years has not only heightened consumers’ BS filter, but also shifted what activism means.

To get consumers behind their cause, brands have lowered the barriers to the extremes. They equate a like, a share, or a checkout basket loaded with eco-friendly goods to actively protecting the environment. As to say “buy this, to clear your conscience”, or “hashtag this, and you’ve done your part”. This cultural trend became such a dominant form of activism that it even got its own name - ‘slacktivism’.

We saw an opportunity for Adidas to use the power of sports to stop the cycle of slacktivism. Our humble campaign quickly turned into a brand mission: inspire the world to put the ‘act’ back into ACTivism. We designed a 30-day live experience to give immediacy, momentum and transparency to this new standard of activism.

To fight against the slacktivism’s low barriers of participation, we strategically chose a sport that puts us on an even playing field. Thanks to Running’s democratic and universal appeal, nearly 170 million people globally run minimum once a week. However, running communities are scarce, and runner activists often act as lone warriors. Tapping into what sociologists call ‘social facilitation’, we believed creating a shared, live experience could push people to do more for their beliefs than they would alone.

There were also challenges that are unique to ocean plastic pollution – the lack of visibility. We planted our campaign in the heart of inland cities where it is least visible, and ensured that every km ran for the oceans is also immediately visible to the world.

That is how Running became the sport that fronted our ACTivist movement, and Run For The Oceans became our global live experience.

Every aspect of our creative idea stayed true to ACTivism. This means, taking action was our only cost of entry. We invited participants to contribute their KMs on running apps Runtastic and JoyRun. In return, adidas would match the first million KM with a $1m donation for the Parley Ocean Plastic Program in their names.

Our event was kicked off on World Oceans Day in June 2018, across 23 coastal and inland cities. We gave our running captains a flag to rally their troops. We connected squads across the globe to form the largest running crew in the world via a live digital platform. With every KM ran, our collective digital counter increases in real time, transforming individual activism into a live shared activist experience.

Our newly formed global ACTivist community smashed the goal of 1,000,000 KMs in just 4 days. By day 30, we have collectively run a staggering 12,402,854 KMs – that’s like running from the moon and back 16 times!

A total of 924,237 runners from around the world joined our shared activist movement. 85% of which were new registrants on Runtastic and JoyRun who never ran with adidas before. As a result, we’ve recruited a targeted mass of nearly 1 million environmentally conscious consumers that we can mobilise in the years to come.

Not only have we allowed the world to experience how “sports has the power to change the world”, we’ve helped Adidas in defining a standard in what activism should be. And that’s why Run For The Oceans is already warming up for 2019.