This campaign leverages a partnership with the globally successful, culturally relevant TV phenomenon that is Rick and Morty, blending the unfamiliar worlds of sports and science fiction to bring football to fans in the context they crave – fun, fresh and baked in culture.

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.

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.

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.

Centred around the 90 second animation, the campaign utilised the portal to represent multidimensional speed, as a red thread that flowed through all touchpoints. As the campaign left the world of animation and landed in our reality it was the portal that guided the audience through the many campaign elements.

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.