How Adidas and Timothée Chalamet Perfected the Art of World Cup Storytelling

Adidas exec Chris Murphy sat down again with SportsVerse to talk about the brand's latest football marketing masterstroke.

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Yesterday, mid-morning New York time, I started getting inundated with messages from people sharing their excitement about the teaser trailer for Adidas’ World Cup campaign, which had just been posted on Timothée Chalamet’s Instagram account and had already racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

Most of the messages I received looked like this.

I’d been waiting for the reactions. The day before, I obtained a secret link to the full version of the video in preparation for my interview with Chris Murphy, senior vice president of brand marketing at adidas North America. (If Chris’ name is familiar, it’s because I interviewed him back in October in my deep-dive into Adidas World Cup strategy, which you can read here.)

Inside Adidas' World Cup Strategy

I’ll be honest, when brands or their hard-working comms agencies send out pitches talking up an “exciting new campaign”, I am often guilty of rolling my eyes. It’s not because of anything a brand has done specifically; it's more about the sheer amount of content we are inundated with in the sportswear market, and how so much of it hardly adds value or is remembered even days later. But it took only a few seconds to realise, watching Adidas’ “Backyard Legends,” brand campaign, that this was something very different altogether.

The campaign, which takes the form of a five-minute short film, stars Timothée Chalamet, who is joined by a stellar cast of Adidas’ elite football ambassadors, both active and retired, including Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal, Jude Bellingham, Trinity Rodman, Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham and Alessandro Del Piero. It also includes a cameo from Bad Bunny, one of Adidas’ foremost cultural ambassadors who has increasingly been integrated into the brand’s overall marketing efforts in sports like Formula 1 and football. There are also appearances for other top Adidas footballers such as Ousmane Dembélé, Raphinha, Pedri and Florian Wirtz.

Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Show Gives Adidas the Perfect Moment to Shine

There’s no doubt that the campaign was designed as a full-on Adidas tour de force, a flexing of the brand’s muscles just weeks out from the World Cup. It’s designed as a reminder that Adidas believes that it is the “original” sportswear brand to cater to football and that it dominates the sport, in the same way that Nike feels that it owns the basketball category.

Even casting Chalamet was a smart play. It goes far beyond the fact that he’s at the center of the cultural zeitgeist right now. He’s a known lover of football, having played since a kid (evidence: the picture of him playing against now-Liverpool defender Joe Gomez in a youth tournament back in the day, as well as his love for ultra-niche football things, including France’s St Etienne and retro England tracksuits). It means, as well as the bonus of him being one of the most talked-about figures in popular culture, Chalamet’s role in the campaign feels authentic — he’s there on merit.

“I think there are a few brands that can speak to sports the way that we can, and then can also tie the culture piece in authentically,” said Murphy, citing how the likes of Chalamet and Bad Bunny are integrated into the campaign — and in general the way the brand speaks to its consumers — alongside current stars like Trinity Rodman and Jude Bellingham, as well as retired legends in the Adidas orbit like Zidane and Beckham. It means the brand is able to speak to every generation of fan and every genre of consumer, from those focused on the fashion side of football apparel to those into more traditional merch or performance gear.

Crucially, it’s the film’s storyline, not just the presence of its all-star cast, which makes it so noteworthy. It’s a feel-good plot which follows the all-star Adidas players on their way to take on an undefeated neighbourhood team whose exploits and lore are recounted by Chalamet on the way to the match-up. There are small details which create a sense of nostalgia for anyone who has played the game growing up: playing for bragging rights in your local area, throwing shoes (or any other objects nearby) up into trees to dislodge a ball that ended up there after a wayward shot. It’s a scrappy, energetic, rousing spot, which harks back to classic Nike football commercials in the 2000s and early 2010s.

Positive coverage of the campaign teaser alone went instantly viral online, reaching outlets (like the Daily Mail) which typically only write about sportswear companies in times of scandal. It marked another huge catalyst for the Adidas brand (following on from the momentum of the post-London Marathon hysteria).

Even investors seemed moved by the positive momentum generated by the campaign, with Adidas stock up four percent yesterday, and up over 13 percent in the past month.

The Final Countdown

The Backyard Legends film was the final big trick up Adidas’ sleeve before the tournament kicks off. It was the crowning piece in a series of major moments since the end of last year, when the brand began its World Cup offensive with the launch of the official tournament ball at a major event at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Since then, there has hardly been a month where Adidas has not made headlines with a well-executed rollout of many of the 3,000 individual products it has created in connection to various aspects of the World Cup, including partner team jerseys, lifestyle collections, the cheeky recreation of the USA ‘94 jersey, collaborations and even a national team collection for pets, which proved to be another big internet hit.

While he declined to break out sales figures, Murphy said each collection had sold well, adding that “there is still more product to come” before kick off on June 11.

Total Football

The brand’s omnipresence in the lead-up to the tournament was very intentional. Under CEO Bjorn Gulden, North America has long been seen as a critical growth market for the brand — both in terms of sales and for cultural bragging rights, given it’s the backyard of Adidas’ biggest rival, Nike. (Adidas’ attention to detail in football is no coincidence either. Gulden is a former professional footballer himself and to this day obsesses over every detail of the game.)

This fascinating dynamic between the rival brands will play out this summer at the World Cup itself: Nike will have the advantage that the tournament is on home soil, whereas Adidas has the major advantage of being the official tournament sponsor (whose logos and products will be plastered everywhere from the match ball to in-stadium advertising). Among Adidas’ 14 partner federations taking part in the World Cup will be Spain and Argentina, two teams likely to make deep runs in the tournament, and who will be considered alongside Nike-sponsored France as some of the favourites to win it all in July.

Right now, Adidas is a brand that can do no wrong, from athletes running sub-2 marathons in its shoes to healthy earnings reports to a near-perfect pre-World Cup product and marketing rollout. Meanwhile, Nike has plans to make a splash of its own between now and June 11.

Jude Bellingham (L) and Lamine Yamal (R) in the film.

The Three Stripes’ dominance in world football is best summed up by the fact that three of the last four World Cups have been won by an Adidas-sponsored team: Argentina (2022), Germany (2014) and Spain (2010). Nike’s sole victory in that period came when France lifted the trophy at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

No amount of Timothée Chalamet-induced hysteria or sexy football-fashion clothing will ever influence how things go on the pitch this summer, but Adidas’ pre-World Cup rollout tells exactly what we need to know about the brand’s intention to dominate the sportswear industry’s football category and remain the go-to brand in the hearts of casual and traditional fans worldwide.

It’s over to Nike now to see if it has anything left up its sleeve to show its German rival who’s boss this summer. My popcorn is ready.

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That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you next time,

DYM