Happy new week.
It’s safe to say that Adidas is bringing football marketing back. Today’s newsletter isn’t about comparing Adidas to Nike but to give Adidas their flowers. What they’re doing right now feels intentional, authentic to the brand, and like a clear rediscovery of their football identity.
Adidas has been dropping one of the most entertaining football campaigns lately, and somehow football itself isn’t even the main character. Their latest global Chaos or Control campaign pits two of their biggest boots and playing styles against each other, the F50 representing chaos and the Predator representing control.
They’ve split their huge and seriously impressive talent roster, from current stars to football legends, placing them on opposing sides and pulling fans into the decision too. We’re seeing players like Jude Bellingham, Lamine Yamal, Trinity Rodman, Aitana Bonmatí, Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham, Ousmane Dembélé, Noni Madueke, Ademola Lookman, Rafael Leão, and Moise Kean step into full character. They’re not just athletes anymore, they’re actors, and fans are loving every second of it.
It has become a social series where they’re finding different ways to market the boots but through the players personality and just interesting narratives. The only features really mentioned about the boots are the fact that one is purely for a choatic style of play and another is control.
In their latest social media reel, it almost feels like it could have been directed by Guy Ritchie himself. We see players like Noni Madueke, João Pedro, Hugo Ekitike, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Mohamed Salah, Curtis Jones, Gianluigi Donnarumma, and Riccardo Calafiori leaning fully into their acting bag. It’s cinematic, character led, and genuinely entertaining, the kind of content fans don’t just watch, but actually engage with.
Football marketing is so back. It’s fun, it’s exciting, and it’s engaging. In today’s landscape, brands need to invest in their brand just as much as their product and start creating movies for social, not just repurposed TV ads. People want to be impressed on their feeds. Attention isn’t something you can demand anymore, it has to be earned. That means giving people something genuinely worth stopping their scroll for.
Brand building feels more important than it has in a long time. In an overcrowded, content heavy world, the brands that win are the ones that consistently invest in how they show up, not just what they sell. Mindshare comes before market share, and adidas is clearly playing the long game. More brands should lean into entertainment and culture, and stop treating product as the main character.
This shows a reordering of priorities. Football is not being used as a hook; it is being treated as a cultural system with its own narratives, tensions and personalities. The boots matter but only because they are embedded in that system. This is a reminder that attention follows belief, not the other way around.
👌👌👌