“I don’t want to be you. I just want your boots.”

For years, football brands have placed the world’s most successful players on a pedestal, suggesting that young football fans can set themselves on a path to replicate idols IF they buy their boots.

But that path is tried, tested and past its sell-by date. Kids these days are more informed, more cynical and more astute than ever. In order to truly resonate with our consumer and make this idea bigger than just the boots we’re selling, we wanted to break traditional convention, and encourage them to create for themselves.

Anyone can imitate… but only those who create have the power to stand out from the crowd. We came up with a film series to subvert the hype and adoration that surrounds professional footballers, and instead encourage young footballers to #NeverFollow… empowering them to create their own path.

The campaign launched with a film featuring the world’s most expensive footballer, Paul Pogba. Initially, he appears to be the star, telling the viewer that they will never be him. However, he’s quickly interrupted by the voice of our young male consumer: the film’s unseen hero. We gave him the confidence and power to create for himself, playfully placing him at loggerheads with Pogba.

From Pogba’s off-field swagger to on-field prowess, our consumer digitally disrupts & verbally messes with Pogba’s world and rejects the idea of imitating him.

We rolled out a series of films featuring other top-tier players and football influencers, each of whom were playfully dismissed by our mouthy consumer.

This campaign isn’t for fans. It’s for young footballers. After all, those who create, never follow.

The message from the greats is clear though – you’ll never be them, so be you.

BUT… you can still have their

With zero media spend, the video content racked up over 9 million organic views across key adidas and partner platforms.

The film content resonated with our audience as well. 95% of viewers watched through to the end, with 22% of viewers clicking through to the e-commerce product page on adidas.com.

That high level of viewer retention also meant our audience understood Pogba’s encouraging “You be you” reprise, ensuring our message was clear and understood. That message was well received to boot, with 97% of YouTube engagements being positive ones.

On social, the content landed with impact, generating over 40 million unique impressions and over 150,000 mentions of the #NeverFollow hashtag, helping adidas to experience a 15% social audience growth.

Product sale statistics withheld.

Our audience was teenage boys; so YouTube, Instagram, Facebook & Twitter were our platforms of choice. We laced our films with visual cues to meme culture and the world of social media – the very arena in which the hype, fanfare and scrutiny surrounding pro footballers exists.

We played on conventional sports advertising, where the brand makes their superstar asset look incredible and tells the audience that if they buy their boots, they can be like their hero.

Subverting that tradition, we tapped into the never-ending fan commentary that surrounds superstar players on social media, and gave them one unified voice through our VO, interrupting and disrupting the world of our pro assets, thereby placing the boots on a pedestal, rather than the players.

‘Following’ is what fans do. This was our chance to encourage individuality in young footballers with a bigger brand message to Never Follow.

adidas were about to launch their newest drop of football boots. However, this product launch couldn’t just be about the boots - kids see new products pop up all over their social feeds weekly. In a market where young consumers are overloaded with new products all claiming to be the latest and greatest, the arrival of slightly newer boots in a different colour wasn’t going to grab headlines and hearts on its own.

Don’t get us wrong, the new Ace16 range was sure to get people talking… but for us to really set pulses racing, we aimed to narrow in and expand upon the brand’s self-affirmed positioning of being not only suppliers of kit, but also suppliers of confidence.

It’s here that we felt we had the chance to create something our consumers could get excited about, encouraging them to pursue their own creative identity rather than impersonate their heroes.