adidas wanted to drive its perception as an innovation brand and showcase how they create the best for the athlete, at speed. A unique project was chosen to pull back the curtain on how adidas work with elite athletes - “Chasing 100”.
Set on the Nardo ring, a high-speed test track typically used by cars and motorcycles, adidas set out on a bold mission to showcase the limits of human potential by powering the first athlete to run 100km in under 6 hours.
Through deep and detailed storytelling the communications objective was to drive fame for the attempt, visibility for the adidas products, and share of voice within sport for the brand through a compelling, unforgettable and historic moment.
The task had three core elements;
The target audience was innovation geeks, a specific selection of early adopters who are enthusiastic about running tech, Strava data and the engineers behind high performance athletes and teams. The wider audience consideration was split into broader categories: Runners; who can understand what goes into a 100km run; and everyone else who appreciates remarkable human achievements.
The creative approach became a reimagination of a running narrative but through a motorsport lens, anchored by a global team of elite athletes and a multi-phase storytelling strategy. We created an end-to-end content experience, starting with social-first assets across platforms (hosted by F1 star Valtteri Bottas) to build excitement and pull fans into the process. A long form documentary became the deep dive experience crescendo for all those hooked into journey at any touchpoint.
“Chasing 100” became shorthand for the reimagination of human speed, centred on the radical team behind the dream, whilst giving a longer term platform for future explorations of athlete performance.
The content was broken down into three phases, helping us to seamlessly bring audiences along with us on this innovation journey:
We ensured every element of this journey was captured from the training camp to the race itself, filming interviews with athletes representing 4 continents (Sibusiso Kubheka, Aleksandr Sorokin, Charlie Lawrence, Jo Fukuda and Ketema Negasa) and witnessing the state-of-the-art technology in action (adizero Evo Prime X, Climacool apparel and Cooling systems).
To take us into the unseen world of adidas Innovation, we recruited an athlete famed for speed and known on social for embarking on mad endurance challenges; Formula 1 favourite, Valterri Bottas. He spent a day with the athletes and lead scientists who challenged him to experience the technology and training first-hand.
A month after the training camp at adidas Innovation HQ we landed in Nardo, Italy where the race took place, starting at midnight in the exclusive racetrack - Nardo Technical Centre. Armed with 3 pursuit vehicles, drone operators and multiple videographers we recorded the highs and lows of the race for almost 6 hours. This involved precision planning with a team stationed at the finish line to capture the critical moment we all waited for.
Then a jaw-dropping moment of ultramarathon history happened. Sibusiso Kubheka was the athlete who pulled off the unthinkable in an astonishing 5:59:20 – shaving 6 minutes and 15 seconds off the previous fastest time of 6:05:35.
10 days after the result, we released our “Chasing 100” documentary. A crafted long-form film our audiences were clamouring for: a deeper dive behind the mission, the athletes, the tech, the training and the race itself - the story behind the record. This never before seen footage from the race was met with overwhelming reaction, leaving fans demanding more. We truly connected by placing the humanity behind the innovation at the core of the output, ensuring we drew in audiences around the human potential driving the unthinkable challenge. But the heartfelt response was even greater.
Innovation and inspiration collided to rewrite the history books, and our hero documentary told the full story centred on human potential.
The reach of the story was achieved with absolutely no media spend or paid promotion and the documentary has so far amassed over 743k entirely organic views and 30k likes on YouTube in just 3 months.
Making it the 12th most viewed video on adidas YouTube. The total watch time was 70.2k hours - 59k hours longer than usual adidas uploads, demonstrating its exceptional earned-media performance.
The film generated 11.6 million impressions purely through unpaid distribution, achieving a 3.6% click-through rate and generating 415.2k views from those impressions. There were 489k unique viewers of the documentary and 5k subscribers followed as a result. The majority of watchtime surfaced on TV devices (37%), which surpassed expectations, underscoring the success of this long-form, cinematic storytelling output. The Instagram teaser asset directly contributed to 34% of traffic from external sites to the full documentary, adding to the film’s entirely organic reach.
From the 700+ comments, the sentiment was overwhelmingly positive with a large proportion demanding a feature length expanded version and the top comment receiving 3.8k likes.
The views on the documentary skewed to a majority 95% male audience, with 50% of views coming from a 25-35 age range. Truly hitting the intended primary audience of innovation geeks signalled in the original brief.
