After Stella McCartney and Yohji Yamamoto, Adidas signed a new agreement with another big name in fashion: Diesel. For now it regards the Originals collection, and it's going to last four years. With such iconic lifestyle brands connecting expectations are definitely high, for the product and for the communication around it.

Of course there is a dedicated site to look at... http://diesel.adidas.com suggests 83 original ways to successfully waste your time, and you are invited to participate by uploading your pictures and videos, to testify on each one.

Let's go straight to the point: the site is beautiful, the pictures to illustrate the suggestions are great and are a good mix of Diesel and Originals universes, the layout is clean, ergonomy ok if you have a big screen, but ...it took me ages to access to it, waiting for the 83 sections to upload!

I am perplexed by the goal of this site.

If I get to upload something, why should I come back? To see the rating? Is that enough? And what about the products? on the page they only accessible via a link on the menu bar...is that a good enough investment for both brands?

I ask myself these questions as a former sport brand manager:
1) Yes Diesel and adidas want to look cool and young but is uploading your image cool enough?
2) Is this the best way to communicate what both brands stand for? Wasting time?
3)Shouldn't the product be the goal?

Posted by: Michele at March 12, 2008 05:05 PM

Anyone know which agency is behind this?

Posted by: Kurre at March 13, 2008 04:16 PM

I agree with pieces of what Michele says but actually find it interesting and compelling for a few reasons:

1) It drives community - it's not quite as community driven as some of the things Nike has been doing lately with social networking around running, etc...but still is interesting
2) The partnership between Diesel and Adidas is more about lifestyle products than about sports products and this campaign fits that well
3) There is that bit of goodness in there without blatantly saying "we're green" or "we're socially responsible"
4) People are wasting so much time online this is a better time waster than most because it may inspire interesting offline things as well

Posted by: Ryan at March 14, 2008 01:54 PM

The agency behind this Website is SID LEE from Montréal (Canada).

www.sidlee.com

Posted by: Yanick Bédard at March 14, 2008 04:21 PM

The agency indeed is Sid Lee, and I must say a rather excellent one at that. Yes, I am biased, as I work for adidas and indeed worked on this particular project as producer.

The nature of this partnership was not for us to focus purely on our sports heritage, but to also open up a new way forward. We've other partnerships coming up in the future which will no doubt the cause of other conversations, similar to this particular partnership.

Feel free to stay in touch.

Posted by: Lyndon at March 17, 2008 12:57 PM