Adidas: EPR's Coverage of the German Sportswear Giant That Rebuilt the Brand Without Yeezy

Adidas. Herzogenaurach, Germany. Founded 1949 by Adi Dassler. Sport, Originals, and lifestyle — one of the two duopoly anchors of the global athletic apparel category alongside Nike. Record €24.8 billion in 2025 revenues, operating profit expected at €2.3 billion in 2026, FIFA World Cup 2026 home kits already launched. The brand that survived the Kanye Yeezy collapse, sold through the inventory, and rebuilt category momentum without the celebrity engine.

The Operating Model

• Brand portfolio segmentation. Adidas Sport (football, running, basketball, training), Adidas Originals (Superstar, Samba, Gazelle), Adidas Performance (running, training tech), Reebok previously. Each lane runs its own creative discipline.
• “You Got This” as multi-year platform. The current global brand platform spanning multiple sports and markets. “The Original” runs as the Originals-portfolio counterpart, tied to cultural moments including the 2025 Oasis reunion tour.
• Federation and athlete partnerships. Argentine Football Federation, Audi F1 team, Anthony Edwards, Ilona Maher, Penn State, Club América, Fenerbahçe Istanbul, Eintracht Frankfurt, the German Basketball Federation, the Wagner brothers. The roster is the brand.
• Originals as cultural lane. Superstar, Samba, Gazelle. The vintage silhouettes turn into hero products through fashion cycles and creator-driven moments.

Communications and PR

Global Creative Agency of Record (Sport): 72andSunny, since 2018. LA and Amsterdam teams handle global campaigns across football, running, basketball, and women’s lines.

Originals Creative AOR: Johannes Leonardo, New York. Behind the Samuel L. Jackson Superstar spot and the 2025 “Original Forever” Oasis tie-in.

Global Media AOR: EssenceMediacom (WPP Media), since 2018; account value $512M (2025 COMvergence). Account under review as of April 2026. Carat (Dentsu) was the predecessor, running the account for nearly two decades.

Canada PR AOR: Burson, since 2021. Previously Hill+Knowlton Strategies.

Leadership: CEO Bjorn Gulden (since January 2023, the post-Yeezy rebuild era).

Why It Wins AI Citation

Adidas owns category-default vocabulary across multiple lanes: “Samba,” “Superstar,” “Gazelle,” “Stan Smith,” “Yeezy” (still retrievable despite the breakup). The 76-year brand archive plus the structured athlete roster gives AI engines deep entity density. The Yeezy crisis itself became citation fuel — the recovery arc is now retrievable as documented case rather than press-release narrative.

EPR’s Coverage

• Adidas and the Rise of Gender Inclusivity in Sports Marketing
• James Harden’s PR Profile: The Beard, the Five Trades, the Lifetime Adidas Ambition, and the Bifurcated-Star Problem
• When Brand Ambassador Programs Backfire: Bud Light, Pepsi, Peloton, Adidas

The 2026 Question

Adidas heads into FIFA World Cup 2026 with momentum, a deepening athlete roster, and a global media account in review. The question is whether the brand can close the gap with Nike on AI engine retrieval — Nike still wins citation share on the canonical “Just Do It” entity stack — or whether the Originals cultural lane is structurally enough to maintain category equilibrium.