This is the story of how a brand that had lost cultural relevance became the hottest sneaker brand of 2016.We had big ambitions for adidas Originals in 2016. We had to prove that the momentum we generated in 2015 for its Superstar sneaker franchise wasn’t just a flash in the pan, riding the wave of “retro cool” to make an old sneaker popular again. We would have to capture the imagination of a new generation with our vision for the future of the Originals brand. This vision would be led by the launch of NMD, the first truly new sneaker franchise that adidas Originals had ever produced. This time the brand wouldn’t be adding a new feature to an old silhouette--it would be an entirely fresh design and something the sneaker world had never seen before. As an added challenge, we would be launching this new chapter of our “Strikethru” campaign with nearly half the media budget we had in 2015 and without the celebrity star power the category has been built on. Success would mean finding a way to make an outsized impact with the most skeptical audience. With NMD as our signal to the world, we needed a completely new way to reach a new generation. To stand out from the pack, our strategy was to inspire the youth of the world to challenge the mainstream dystopian vision of the future that is an obstacle to their courage to create. Like all powerful movements, we needed a powerful anthem. With the original song “Your Future is Not Mine” and an accompanying music video that we created for the launch of our effort, we gave NMD and our target a provocative mantra to rally behind and push back on the conventional wisdom. We cherry-picked key cultural moments where the future is being debated to air our film, providing an alternative path from the ones being presented by older generations. But a mantra wasn’t enough… a movement demands action. In key global markets, we created experiential space that brought to life the dystopian world portrayed in our film. More than a place to exhibit various NMD models, it became a collaboration, performance and party hub for the creative generation that we champion--holding a series of art installations, music performances, creative workshops, and film screenings. The launch of NMD was the most successful product launch in adidas Originals’ history.With “Future,” Originals sales in 2016 dwarfed 2015 sales every month of the year, despite the much lower media spend in 2016. And this sales performance helped adidas steal more than 2points of market share from Nike.Originals helped overall company revenue grow by 18% and Wall Street took notice. Sales growth as the campaign rolled out caused the company to revise its earnings report four times in2016. By the end of the year adidas’ share price increased by 63%.We got a new generation to believe in the future of adidas and, more importantly, to believe in their ability to create their own future.