The World Cup isn’t only the biggest moment on the global cultural calendar but the biggest marketing opportunity in the world. With a huge global audience, every tournament is a battle of the brands to win hearts and minds of the world watching. With sports brands expected to take first place. Almost impossible.

Our objective was to break through the marketing clutter of the World Cup by establishing Adidas’ Impossible is Nothing brand attitude with value and impact

The brief was to use the final of the World Cup as a moment that drives fame and cut through for adidas using owned media. In lack of a crystal ball, we needed to envision the moment before it happened, who would win and how we could utilise it.

Adidas presents the impossible billboard. A monumental real time media effort celebrating Messi’s world cup victory, in the iconic, impossible to advertise, Dubai frame. For the first time in history people were seeing the impossible - a picture in the Dubai frame at the most celebrated moment of the world cup, and adidas were the brand to make it happen. How did we do it? We didn’t. The whole piece was by definition, impossible. It was never there. We faked it. We created a tactical yet gladiatorial spectacle using a 3D optical illusion on a scale to match the moment, and “shared” it on Instagram for the world to see. Not only was it not real but hardly anyone believed it wasn’t, digital manipulation at its best.

In order to drive fame during the Final we needed to be part of the conversation as it was happening. With many years of watching World Cup Finals ourselves we were confident that the buzz would be around the winning team, we just didn’t know who would win.

Whatever we did had to be a huge celebration. We found an angle in Messi. There was already hype around this World Cup being his last, and therefore last chance to lift the trophy after 5 failed attempts. Our hypothesis was, if Argentina won, the celebration would be about the G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) becoming world champion on his last attempt. Herewith sat our opportunity, we needed to do something impossible that would redirect World Cup Final energy to adidas, and it should be a celebration of Messi lifting the World Cup.

Only two hours after Argentina’s victory on Sunday night, an unbranded videoclip seemingly taken from a moving car and showing an impossibly huge adidas’s digital billboard celebrating Messi’s victory in Dubai was frantically shared on social media by people around the world.

The billboard showed the impossible: a moving image featuring four different Messi’s from past World Cup editions (2006 through 2022) along with the brand’s Impossible is Nothing mantra.

Executed in the speedy time between the semi-finals and the final, the surprising content shared with the world was entirely CGI generated in barely two days – allowing adidas to create a full-blown social and digital experience to match the scale of the moment.

The Impossible Billboard was thought as an authentic, social-native piece of content. The vertical, 6-second, choppy format, and realistic look-and feel played a definitive role in the content’s shareability across platforms while starting an on-line conversation around adidas’ Impossible is Nothing attitude, thanks to an impossible to believe tribute to Messi’s win presented to the world in such a short time.

The reactions came as fast as the piece itself as within two days of being released, this social media post generated over 250 million organic views and 12.5+ million engagements across Instagram, TikTok and twitter making this CGI generated, non-existing digital billboard the most viewed billboard of 2022.

What does this ad spell for the future of OOH advertising if we can turn any surface or city into an ad?