Adidas’s core mission is to change lives through sport. That’s why we partnered with tennis legend and original creator of change Billie Jean King on Here to Create Change campaign. An effort to help us find solutions to the problems faced by young girls in sport.

As a sports icon and a social justice pioneer, BJK is evidence that positive change on and off the court for women is possible, and we celebrate her achievements with a commitment all aspiring female athletes can step into.

Our brief was to create a impactful, local experience around & during the U.S. Open that would give adidas a platform to create positive change in sport for adidas’ creator audience -- young female athletes in NYC. We wanted to use this moment and platform to spark a wider conversation about female athletes in sport. Our ultimate goal was to make adidas the most disruptive brand at the US Open.

The campaign played to the backdrop of the US Open, a unique opportunity for the brand to help empower the next generation of female athletes and to showcases adidas’ commitment to equality, positive change, and the fight for equality that BJK started 45 years ago.

Unveiling research that shows that less than 1 in 3 girls continue to play sport after school, adidas kicks off Here to Create Change, which commits to breaking down the barriers that see nearly 1.7 million potential female athletes quit playing in NYC alone.

Currently, girls of NYC are dropping out of sport at 2.4x the rate of boys . The drop off is significant. During middle school there is only a 5% gap between the percentage of male and female athletes, which rises to 13% in high school, with the biggest decline between the ages of 17 and 18. At today’s rate, girls are 1.5x less likely to play sport than boys , and by the age of 19 only 29% of girls (versus 56% of boys ) will play any sport at all.

The US Open, and the global audience the event delivers, is the perfect stage for this program and showcases adidas’ commitment to equality and positive change.

To show adidas’ effort and commitment to women in sports, we launched Here to Create Change, a campaign around the original creator of change: tennis legend Billie Jean King.

In 1973, Billie Jean King played the most important tennis match ever: The Battle of the Sexes. That day, she changed the male-dominated tennis establishment in a pair of blue adidas.

For the 45th anniversary, adidas could have re-released her shoe. But that's not how BJK would do it. She prefers to change things. So we did just that, and turned the most iconic adidas sneakers into blue BJKs.

At the U.S. Open we invited everyone to BJK their shoes – no matter what brand.

For the first time ever, a brand utilized other brands to launch a new shoe. And for someone who changed the game for good, using every other brand for good was the right thing to do.

Adidas’s core mission is to change lives through sport. That’s why we partnered with tennis legend and original creator of change Billie Jean King on Here to Create Change campaign. An effort to help us find solutions to the problems faced by young girls in sport.

As a sports icon and a social justice pioneer, Billie Jean King is evidence that positive change on and off the court for women is possible, and we celebrate her achievements with our own commitment all aspiring female athletes can step into.

The campaign played to the backdrop of the US Open, a unique opportunity for the brand to help empower the next generation of female athletes and to showcases adidas’ commitment to equality, positive change, and the fight for equality that BJK started 45 years ago.

We turned the most iconic adidas shoes into Billie Jean King blue shoes. Then we invited people to transform their shoes - whether they're adidas, Nike, Reebok, Puma or Louis Vuitton- into King's blue three-striped sneakers, live at the US OPEN adidas store.

On August 27th, consumers walked in the adidas store and got their shoes transformed into BJK shoes for free at the hands of one of the best sneaker artist in the world, Jake Danklefs.

Using stencils and spray paint, we customized 220 pairs of shoes in which we recreated the zig zag pattern, made a vinyl graphic, laid that down onto the shoes and even recreated the tongue tag with BJK face on it.

Even Billie Jean King herself made her way to the adidas store at Flushing Meadows to sign the changed shoes and of course, to help BJK a couple of pairs.

People BJKed tons of shoes and even Stan Smith himself got his classic shoes BJKed. BJK shoes are now on sale on eBay for up to $2,500. Celebrities shared their BJK shoes like Kelly Clarkson, Angelique Kerber, Garbine Muguruza and etc.

After the campaign, adidas observed a 20% increase in tennis sales in the US and the Barricade, adidas tennis shoe, had a 103% increase in sales in the US if compared to Europe in the same period. + 100 million impressions and 250 news stories in every continent.