When I was child (I might still be a child, I’m not sure) the Adidas Superstar was the height of cool. Not just anybody could pull it off, wearing Superstars, you had to earn the right. This might see like an exaggeration, but it is not – I grew up in a golden age of materialism. I’d just like to say: that was like so much fun, #YOLO. In spite of all my unresolved issues vis a vis never being one of the cool kids, I cannot deny that I was always, and remain, thoroughly impressed by the mystical quality of the Superstar. And it must be said, that Adidas’s latest Superstar related campaign goes a long, long way toward fixing the legendary status of the Superstar into the very fabric of the existence.
Adidas’s latest I’m No Superstar rhetoric, while not mind-blowing in and of itself, lays a solid conceptual platform from which the people who make crazy good ads (don’t ask me who these people are, or what they look like) to launch into interstellar advertising space. And when I say not mind-blowing, I do not mean that it cannot be appreciated. I, myself, love this idea that superstardom is not the perks, ego-boosts and amenities that might come along the way, but rather something more fundamental and authentic. I like that thought, I agree with that thought, but it is not a particularly cosmic one. Though this is, in my just the other side of humble opinion, a slightly disappointing thought, it is not a lamentable one. Especially considering heights to which the campaign ends up taking the Superstar.
I have a question for this campaign: who art directed you? Because I would like to ask them out on a date. I would do something really nice for them like put together a picnic basket of the best most gourmet fingers foods, and then take them to Narnia where they can dance and be merry with a myriad of adorable woodland creatures. I would go to these extremes for them because they deserve the very best. The visual element of this campaign is just astonishing. It as if Apollo himself (the god of art and beauty) descended from his lofty heights atop Mount Olympus, slit his wrist and then bled onto this campaign, thus fortifying it in the divine. I will not go into the specifics of the of the 90 second film, for fear of not being able to do it justice. Suffice it to say, it is amazing and it should be watched over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
With regards to the print ads; again, magnificently art directed. The only question I have is whether it communicates the over-arching rhetoric sufficiently. I’m not certain, but in any case it is gorgeous enough, that that almost doesn’t matter.
My respect to the people involved with this campaign, and like with my personal hero Stephen T. Colbert, I both want to be you, and be with you. I thank for lodging the Adidas Superstar immovably in the firmament of legend.
– Reviewed by Tyler Lambert, Red and Yellow School
