To attract London’s creative talent, we built ‘Creator Base’ – a first-of-its-kind experience for our audience to shatter through barriers that hold back their life goals.

Football, art, music, opinion and opportunity collided over 5 days connecting London’s Creators with collaborators and influencers, selected to inspire and inform our audience’s life journeys.

We invited Creators to:

Design an adidas football pitch.

Join football debates that never happen on mainstream media eg. #thisfangirl – where female designers locked-up with YouTubers over World Cup reactions.

Meet England’s women players in order to inspire more female footballers.

Show on-pitch creativity with our Tango tournament.

Design adidas GLITCH boots, custom jerseys and mini-sneakers.

Learn from artists like Stormzy and Vloggers F2...alongside performances from IamDDB, Not3s and more athletes & artists who shared stories of fulfilling ambition.

Listen to and meet Reprezent Radio DJs, with DJ battles.

Design event graphics and proximity advertising.

Problem: With the World Cup looming, adidas wanted to be front-of-mind for recommendation and intent to purchase with London’s influential 16-25 year old footballers (measurable by increasing UK Net Promoter Scores), who don’t engage in traditional advertising messages – they judge brands by purpose and action.

With sport central to culture, society, health and happiness, adidas, as the Creator sports brand, believes creativity can change lives – expressed through the World Cup TV campaign: ‘Creativity Is The Answer’.

Strategy: Invite creators to shatter through barriers that hold back their life goals by offering inspiration, tools and introductions to role models to help them express themselves, shape culture, right prejudice wrongs and realise ambitions. All underpinned by our insights platform, Culture Labs, revealing that Creators reject those who tell them how to create, but respect influencers who’ve made it themselves.

Our aim: practice, not preach, the brand mantra: ‘Here To Create’.

Creator Base took place in a modified warehouse in Shoreditch – London’s creative hub and leveraging football fever, the 5-day event launched on June 14, 2018, coinciding with the start of the World Cup.

Creator Base integrated into adidas’s main ATL World Cup campaign which focused on showcasing global artists, across both music and sport, gathering together to celebrate creativity under the strapline, #heretocreate.

Media placements included proximity OOH sites near the venue brought the fictional ATL to life by driving awareness and applications to attend Creator Base.

Every day had its own schedule with different inspirational artists, collaborators and influencers accessible by tickets for sessions and evening gigs via the Dice app which targeted London Creators aged 16-25.

The event was promoted through brand channels including email and adidas.com/uk. Audiences were encouraged to post and share user-generated content via #creativityistheanswer #creatorbase

adidas encouraged social engagement on Instagram: @adidaslondon @adidasfootball

• Total reach : 41m+

• 17.1m+ content views.

• 409k engagements

• Attendees across all days: 2,625

• Number of shirts designed: 947

• Number of glitch designs: 400+

• Number of cage designs: 312

• Number of shoes made: 430

• Number of games of football played: 65+

• 575k adidas London social channel(s) views

• 37k adidas London social channel(s) engagements

• 1 creator cage design brought to life in London, designed by creator at Creator Base.

• In London, Net Promoter Score (recommendation and intent to buy brand tracker) recorded an 8.1pp (+25% YOY) increase.

• Style NPS +9.4pp YOY

• Football NPS +5.5pp YOY

• Mens NPS +8.5pp YOY

• Womens NPS +7.9pp YOY

• Market share grew by 0.9pp. We empowered Creators to make a mark on the world today, but also gave them the confidence to break through barriers that lie ahead tomorrow.