We challenged our audience and the football world to ignore the paralyzing Blah blah blah and go out to create the Wow. adidas wanted their audience to focus on football and performance on the pitch, not rumours. Rather than feeding the gossiping trolls of the web with empty words, we wanted our audience to let their creativity speak.

We enlisted some of the world’s best football players (from Paul Pogba to Gareth Bale to Zinedine Zidane) to face a different kind of opponent: the gossip, the speculation and the BLAH BLAH BLAH that dominates the world of football. With their amazing skill, they’ll defeat the BLAH, delivering brilliance where it matters, on the pitch. The film is a thrilling mixed-media mash-up of football and pop culture references, mixing live football performance and animation to enact battle between the BLAH and the players on the pitch.

Less BLAH, more football. To convey this simple but powerful commentary on sports culture, we enlisted some of the world’s most famous players and clubs in a battle against gossip and speculation.

Launched with a single tweet by Pogba’s agent (“There is no deal done regarding Paul Pogba. lots of bla bla bla.”) and followed up with a teaser GIF about Pogba kindled the fire (“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”) The ramp was built to launch our message firmly into the centre of football culture and beyond.

The film brought the battle to life with a kaleidoscope of animation references, both classic and experimental. Mixing raw, cinematic sports performance with the richness of pop and meme cultures of today, low-fi and high-end 3D animation, SFX and football references, the film is both fantastic and true to the game.

Each of the teams featured in our hero film had a dedicated

It took 1 tweet and a hyper-reactive GIF to send the world’s football fans into a frenzy and catapult adidas and their campaign into the heart of football culture.

Mentions of the First Never Follow campaign increased by 68% compared to the prior months, which included the EURO 16

More than 36M views of our campaign assets with an engagement rate of more than 20%.

More than 130 publications (from sports to fashion and beyond) reported on the campaign, putting adidas at the centre of the conversation

96.7% active engagement