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Last week we were coasting on Shanghai Metro Line No. 2 when our attention was suddenly seized by this new Adidas ad displayed on the LCD next to the exit. We were so awestruck by the concept and grandeur of the commercial that we momentarily lost all of our cynicism about big corporations pushing merchandise...and almost missed our stop. Then, as we got on the escalator off the Huangpi Lu exist, we noticed the entire wall was plastered with the same "Impossible is Nothing" advert, this time with Zheng Zhi, midfielder and captain of the China soccer team.
It just so happened that we ended up at the same dinner table last night with one of the print producers at TBWA, the ad agency behind Adidas' Olympic campaign. She told us that the TV spot that so hypnotized us actually took over 6 months to produce, given the scheduling challenges of all the in-demand Olympic athletes. The concept was hatched over a year ago, and where teams from the U.S. and the U.K. worked on the complicated computer graphics for the commercial, the print versions were handed over to famous illustrators from Beijing.
According to Adidas' press release, the full name of the campaign is “Together in 2008, Impossible is Nothing," and represents the company's largest brand campaign ever for a single market. As the official sportswear sponsor of Beijing Olympics, it makes sense that Adidas would invest heavily in creating that coveted emotional connection with the consumer. The ads mentioned here are the first in the series, with the rest of the campaign to be rolled out in phases leading up to the games.
Our sense of the kind of advertising that succeeds in China is nascent at best, but for this casual subway passenger we dare say it was one of the coolest commercials we had ever seen in Shanghai (or anywhere else, for that matter).
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Right or wrong, the first thing I thought of when I saw those ads (the print versions, along Huaihai Lu) was this statue in Shenyang.
I actually find the advertisements quite creepy. The human tsunami featured in the spot is reminiscent of People Square in the late afternoon, which I do every day. God it's awful.
I heard that they were going to change their slogan to either "free speech is nothing" (or "human rights is impossible", or "people starving to death is nothing" - but they *just* changed it at the last minute.
As long as they show faces of plucky Chinese people and young kids, they will win over a few idiots.
being cynical is great and everything, but those adverts look amazing.
The print ads haven't proved very popular with locals. A lot of people feel that it has too much of a old fashioned propaganda look (this from people at Adidas and my own observations) The message of working together to create the 'Peoples Games' gets lost with the choice of elevating the Athletes so far beyond the regular people. Also the TV ad would have been so much better if it had looked hand drawn like the print ad as opposed to looking like it has a filter over the video.
The print ads do look cool through western eyes though!