adidas was launching a new football boot in its speed franchise, with a focus on mental and physical speed. To stand out in a cluttered category it required a move away from the typical aspirational comms often seen in football, the objective was to create a new kind of envy, rooted in culture and primed for Gen Z.

So, we asked ourselves, is there a prominent figure in Gen Z culture who can help us guide this campaign through multiple dimensions? Yeah, his name is Rick Sanchez. It’s not quantum physics, that’s Ricks bag.

And so, X Speedportal: A Rick and Morty Odyssey was born.

Speed in football is no longer linear, you need to move with a combination of mental and physical speed across multiple dimensions to beat your opponent.

Our audience’s interests are no longer one-dimensional, to grab their attention you need to seamlessly blend the cultural spaces they are active in.

While the category focused on linear speed through comms that felt a bit one-dimensional, the role for adidas was simple, disrupt the football landscape by introducing the world to multidimensional speed on the feet of some multidimensional heroes.

Rick and Morty has a very distinct tone that we wanted to stay true to, and this was the foundation for any copy and messaging. From this we could tell our brand and product story using a voice baked in humor that already had its place in culture, and brought an irreverence to the tone and language not seen in football before.

This campaign created a world that bridged demographics and reached a global audience, with paid media impressions of over 775M for our hero film as well as over 2BN article impressions during launch. We activated at both the Emirates and Old Trafford with successful PR stunts in collaboration with Rick and Morty. The portal device allowed us to activate across our talent roster, with 361 athletes publishing content for the campaign our audience was able to engage beyond expectations. The campaign was a commercial success with 290% increase in net sales in the first week and 147% overall vs FW21 campaign and 111% increase in net sales vs pre-launch. It was also a major success across markets in improving brand communication awareness and boot consideration in the category, with 16% and 12% increases respectively.