Adidas Originals Neighborhood

Objective

In January 2010, adidas Originals launched an innovative augmented reality campaign to celebrate the brand's originality and drive engagement with consumers around their Spring/Summer collection. The campaign aimed to blur the line between physical footwear and digital entertainment by embedding AR codes directly into sneaker tongues, creating an interactive experience that extended the Neighborhood-themed advertising campaign into a playable digital world.

Solution

The campaign featured five iconic adidas Originals sneaker models (Superstar, Stan Smith, Forum, Nizza, and Samba), each embedded with an augmented reality code on the shoe tongue. When scanned with a webcam, the codes unlocked access to the adidas Originals Neighborhood—a 3D virtual interactive world. Throughout the season, adidas released three AR games within the Neighborhood environment, with each game referencing cultural or product elements tied to the brand's 2010 campaign. The first game launched on February 9th, inspired by the adidas Originals Star Wars collection. Players could use their webcam to interact with the virtual environment.