Yung Rappa
- Brand
- Adidas
- Year
- 2018
- Objective
- Product Launch
- Industry
- Fashion & Beauty
- Mechanic
- Music & Rhythm
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Monks
Objective
Adidas wanted to keep its retro-inspired Yung sneaker line top of mind through its 2018 launch and into 2019, betting that a hit of pure '90s nostalgia would give the shoes more cultural traction than a standard product page. The idea was to fuse an authentic '90s web aesthetic with current tech, treating street culture itself as source material worth quoting.
Solution
The homepage looks like a relic dug out of GeoCities, all tiled backgrounds, blinking GIFs and an "under construction" banner, and the visitor scrolls it the way you'd click through an old personal site. One section lets you grab the sneaker and drag it around to spin it and check out the design from every angle. Another autoplays a glitchy campaign video full of VHS static and tracking errors. The centerpiece is Yung Rappa, a rhythm game you play right in the browser: a hip-hop track starts, prompts pop up on screen, and you have to hit each one on the beat, PaRappa the Rapper-style, racking up a score as the song plays out. Finish the track and you can grab wallpapers sized for your phone or desktop before bouncing back to the sneaker itself. Select stores put a physical version of the same game inside a giant Yung shoebox in the window, so passersby could step up and play it live.
- 1
The player lands not on a straightforward product page but on a parody of a mid-90s homepage: tiled backgrounds, animated GIFs, chunky WordArt, blinking colors, and "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" banners.
- 2
From this homepage the player picks a destination, laid out like links on an old fan site: the Yung Rappa game, campaign videos, a promo photo gallery, or device wallpapers.
- 3
In the sneaker section, the player drags to rotate a 3D model of the shoe and examine it from different angles.
- 4
The core game is Yung Rappa, a browser-based rhythm game styled after a 90s console title: a hip-hop track plays and the player hits on-screen prompts in time with the beat, in the vein of Dance Dance Revolution or PaRappa the Rapper.
- 5
The video section plays campaign clips styled as degraded VHS footage with signal glitches.
- 6
The gallery section presents the collection's promo photos as a retro-style slideshow.
- 7
The wallpapers section offers campaign images sized for the player's own devices to download, echoing how fans grabbed wallpapers from 90s sites.
- 8
Offline, the same rhythm game runs inside a Yung shoebox built into an in-store arcade cabinet, letting shoppers play it in person.
