Grime of the century

Adidas cleans up central London

Adidas is staging the “hottest grime event ever” to celebrate both the launch of its adiZones project and the release of Kano’s latest album. Tickets to the exclusive event at a ‘secret London location’ are available by registering for a sweepstake via a MySpace site.

The £1M adiZones project ties in with Adidas’s sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympics and the company’s pledge to invest £100M in the games. The project comprises five free-use community multi-sport areas – situated in Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, Hackney, and Newham – which will house sporting activities 365 days a year.

To promote the upcoming concert, RWD teamed up with Adidas to create five pimped-out adiZone Mercedes-Benz GL-Class SUV vehicles – complete with 5,000 watts of FUSION Electronics. Also performing at the event will be Wiley, Skepta, and Ghetto.

So what?: Adidas is taking its Olympic campaign to the streets, meeting its urban youth customers at their level, on their terms. Come 2012 we’ll have a lot of shiny new stadiums, so it’s good to see a brand providing a more accessible route to sport in somewhat disadvantaged areas. Using RWD and artists that are already immersed in underground culture stops the overriding altruistic nature of the campaign from being viewed as a purely charitable act. This credibility prevents Adidas as being perceived as a purely ‘Robin In The ‘Hood’ figure.

“I absolutely love the adiZones idea. Creating spaces that are of real use to local communities and capture the imagination of local youth. Why not extend the connection to music beyond the grime gig and integrate it more completely into the adiZones programme. Invest in the music too, Adidas. You know you wanna.”
Ant Swede, Creative Planner, FRUKT

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