TBWA China's golden touch for Adidas

One of the most popular campaigns to launch in China in recent years is Adidas' emotional "Together in 2008, Nothing is Impossible" work, visualising the idea that the entire Chinese nation of 1.3 billion people are rallying behind the local athletes competing in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Created by TBWA\China, Shanghai, the outdoor component won China's first-ever Gold Lion at the 2008 International Advertising Festival in Cannes in June, adding to the sensation that China is emerging as a creative force on the global advertising stage.

Featuring diver Hu Jia, basketball player Sui Feifei, and footballer Zheng Zhi, the print/outdoor component of the campaign was shot by Canadian-based photographer Mark Zibert. He photographed 500 people in a stadium, duplicated the images and then had illustrator Lu Ming trace every single detail, a technique employed to make the illustrations seem more lifelike.

In a symbolic gesture, the campaign was launched last November to a large crowd gathered at Beijing's Yongdingmen Gate, the historic former front entrance of Beijing's old city walls.

As the Official Sportswear Partner, Adidas is supplying sportswear for all staff, volunteers and technical officials of the 2008 Olympics and Paralympics and is outfitting the Chinese Olympic team.

"Adidas believes that Olympic success means more than winning medals and that the Olympic spirit is not just for the athletes. The passion that all Chinese are feeling about the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will make China a true sports nation and Adidas will play an active role in this development," said Wolfgang Bentheimer, managing director of Adidas Greater China, at the campaign's launch. "This is the largest campaign we have ever done in China and showcases the power of the nation: When 1.3 billion people come together, 'Impossible is Nothing' at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games."

One of the biggest events for China in the 21st Century has resulted in a flurry of Olympic-themed ads as marketers, whether or not they are sponsors, jostle for the goodwill associated with the games.

Adidas increased its ad spend by 80% in the five months to May 2008 compared to 2007, reaching $478.5m, according to figures supplied by The Nielsen Company. This made it the fifth biggest growth sponsor. In comparison, Nike's spend was up 107% to $453m. Throughout 2007, Adidas spent the bulk of its advertising on TV with $582m, followed by magazines with $17m and then newspapers with $26m, according to Nielsen.

Creative director on the campaign, Elvis Chau, who has since left TBWA for JWT in Shanghai, says work first started on the campaign two-and-a-half years ago, even before he and Lesley Zhou, who was associate creative director on the campaign, joined the agency.

There was a lot of pressure surrounding the campaign as it was a big launch for both TBWA and adidas and for about six months they presented a new idea every week. There were several trips to Adidas' headquarters to Amsterdam, and a couple of nights before the final presentation, they still hadn't cracked it.

With 24 hours to go, they came up with the sports nation idea, which ran with only minor changes.

Chau says the long lead-up helped filter out weak ideas, with previous executions rejected because there wasn't a big idea to spin off or the executions lacked the gravitas needed to run for ten months in three provinces.

"The whole idea is that everybody is a citizen of the sports nation. The print and outdoor campaign is almost a call for action and in the second stage we talk about the athlete's stories and we have other activities to turn this support into real life," says Chau.

Also credited on the work as creative directors are John Merrifield, Yang Yeo and Sarawut Hengsawad.

The digital component and events/PR were handled by Ogilvy One China.

Part of the campaign's success comes down the attention to detail in the execution.

"We used photographer Mark [Zibert] because he was very passionate about the idea and said he would rather shoot it first and then get it illustrated rather than going for a straight illustration, even if this meant shooting it for nothing. Even from the rough layout we felt like there was something big going on with this campaign," says Chau.

The TVCs, directed by husband and wife team Marie Hyon and Marco Spier from Psyop via Stink UK, were launched with the anthem spot, "Together".

Several hundred people were filmed in front of the green screen and duplicated in 3D to increase the size of the crowd. However, it wasn't practical to illustrate the TV from photographs.

"If we did the TV spot in as fine a detail as print they would have needed to create 6,000 drawings for one commercial. We had five commercials, so it would have taken years," says Chau.

China had its biggest presence ever at Cannes 2008 with the China Advertising Assocaition hosting a series of seminars and sponsoring a China party. In total, China picked up one Gold and five Bronze. Two Bronzes went to Ogilvy Shanghai, one in Press for Veneziana Italian Restaurant, and one in Outdoor for Recoil Mosquito Coil. Ogilvy Beijing won two Bronzes in Media, one for WWF and one for Maxwell House and Draft/FCB won a Bronze in Promo Lions for Breast Feeding Awareness.

Creative directors from rival agencies in China praised TBWA's win, saying the campaign is hugely popular in China.

"It plays on the unique voice of the Chinese people as the driving force behind the nation's Olympic success. The illustration demonstrates the power of the people in China in a very artistic way, which in my opinion sets the benchmark for Chinese print work," says Ruth Lee, chief creative officer of DDB, Hong Kong.

Lee, who was based in Mainland China for over a decade before relocating to Hong Kong in January this year, adds that advertising has evolved rapidly in China over the past ten years and is now beginning to catch up to the West in terms of both ideas and execution -- all with a unique Asian twist that screams "Modern China!".

Likewise, Tian It Ng, executive creative director at Lowe Shanghai, thinks the Adidas Gold Lion win could kick start a period of higher quality advertising out of China. Ng, who relocated to Shanghai eight months ago from his native Singapore, recalls being warned that he would never be able to do any good ads in China.

"Why? Because there is so much at stake and therefore research is intensive and you have to use celebrities and also you have to do demonstration sequences and you have no humour in there. The adidas campaign has shown us what can be done. Now, when everyone tells me no, I'll say, 'OK, look at that, it's great'," says Ng.

Chau added that you need the right alignment across the consumer, the client and the creative.

"The consumer in China is changing super fast, especially the new generation. They are the same group as anyone anywhere in the world but a lot of marketers are not actually recognising this. The bigger challenge is when can this alignment meet. When the time comes that will be the time we can actually produce some consistently good work," said Chau.