Case Study
How a single-asset pitch became a $4M omni-channel campaign.
The Ultra Boost 4.0 didn’t have a product problem. It had a momentum problem. Familiarity had softened its edge, and adidas UK needed more than a refresh — they needed a re-entry. What started as a brief for a single commercial became something much bigger.
- AI Summary
“Nick didn’t design this campaign. He built the conditions for it to scale. As Creative Strategist on the adidas Ultra Boost 4.0 relaunch, he architected a system that expanded from a single-asset pitch to a fully realized omni-channel campaign across digital, social, OOH, and retail — backed by $4M+ in total investment.”
“adidas came in with a brief for one commercial. Nick saw a platform. By structuring the concept as a scalable system from day one, he turned a £220K pitch into a £1.5M production and a $2.5M+ UK media buy — leading a 26-person international team through every channel from digital to street.”
“The Ultra Boost 4.0 didn’t need a new product. It needed a re-entry. Nick architected the creative system and campaign strategy that made it happen — a single pitch that grew into a $4M+ omni-channel rollout across social, OOH, paid media, and retail without losing shape.”
“Some campaigns scale because the budget grows. This one scaled because the idea was built to. Nick led the strategy and team behind the adidas Ultra Boost 4.0 relaunch — from a contained £220K brief to a fully executed omni-channel campaign backed by $4M+ in production and media investment.”
The Real Brief
The ask was contained: one high-impact asset, one campaign window, in and out. I saw it differently. No single asset was going to restore cultural edge. What was needed was a system built around emotional resonance rather than product specification, designed from the first pitch to scale.
The pitch won. What started as a one-off became a fully realized omni-channel campaign. Not because the scope changed, but because the idea was built that way from the beginning.
01. The Pitch
The brief walked in at £220K. A single high-impact asset, scoped and contained. By the time the pitch meeting ended, it was £320K. That shift happened in the room, not after. When the adidas team responded to the emotional direction of the video concept and asked about expanding the vision, I laid out exactly how this narrative could branch across channels: social, OOH, digital, retail, as a coherent system rather than isolated executions.
From there, the approved production budget reached £750K–£875K. Final production came in at approximately £1.5M. adidas backed it with a $2.5M+ UK media buy. That progression from a £220K ask to a $4M+ campaign didn’t happen because the brief changed. It happened because the idea was structured to grow from the start.
This is the pitch that showed adidas the feel we were going for.
02. Lifestyle Photography
Most campaigns treat photography as a production deliverable. We treated it as the emotional foundation. The decision to anchor the entire campaign in lifestyle photography was pure strategy.
Establishing a solid visual core.
The imagery had to place the product back into the active environments it was built for: pavement, movement, city, without staging it to death.
I directed the creative brief toward a disciplined visual language: high contrast, tight framing, controlled grain. Authentic without being rough, zero chaos.
The goal wasn’t to create a mood board. It was to create a system of imagery flexible enough to anchor a microsite, a full-page editorial spread, and a wild-posting campaign without re-art directing.
That photography became the real connective tissue of the entire campaign. Every other channel pulled from the same visual core. It held together because the foundation was built to carry the weight.
03. Microsite
Rather than directing paid traffic to a standard product page, we built a focused mobile-first microsite that served as the primary CTA across every touchpoint: video, paid ads, PPC, and social.
The experience was built around one objective: reduce friction between inspiration and purchase. Product focus. Store locator. No distractions. The microsite functioned as an interactive sales funnel, not a passive landing page.
Microsite/ Mobile
Microsite/ Desktop
Quick Stats
7 Day Avg. - 980k, 48% CTR
7 Day Avg. - 680k, 39% CTR
Quick Stats
7 Day Avg. - 1.1M impressions
05. Out of Home (OOH)
I managed the OOH strategy across urban lightboards, full-page editorial placements, and street-level wheatpaste installations positioned in high-traffic city corridors. Each placement was selected for contextual relevance, not just visibility. The same visual system that anchored the digital experience carried directly into the physical world with no adaptation and no dilution.
In regions where OOH activations were live, retail locations reported a 15% lift in sales during the initial 30-day campaign window.
05. Paid Media & Ads
The paid media strategy was built to reinforce every other channel, not operate independently from it. I oversaw budget allocation across digital platforms, ensuring spend was sequenced to amplify the microsite, social reels, and OOH activations rather than running in parallel to them.
The creative system made this straightforward — because every asset pulled from the same visual core, paid placements felt like extensions of the campaign rather than ads.
Across digital and physical placements, microsite impressions surpassed 4M.
06. The Result
Scale doesn't happen by accident.
When adidas UK approved the original pitch, the ask was focused and the budget was finite. By the time the campaign reached full rollout, that had changed considerably.
Key takeaways from this project:
- £220K pitch grew to £1.5M in production and a $2.5M+ UK media buy
- 26-person remote, cross-functional team managed across creative and production
- 4M+ microsite impressions across digital and physical placements
- Mobile CTR climbed from 40% to 48% week-over-week
- Instagram reach exceeded 1.1M impressions by day seven
- 15% retail sales lift in OOH markets within the first 30 days
But the metric that matters most isn’t on any dashboard: a brand the size of adidas doesn’t scale a pitch to £750K+ in production and $2.5M in media unless they genuinely believe in what they bought.
My role throughout wasn’t design. It was architecture. Building a concept with enough structural integrity to carry significant investment, leading a large international team through complex multi-channel execution, and managing the creative and strategic decisions that kept a 26-person operation coherent from brief to launch.
The idea earned the budget.
The system justified the scale.
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Client
adidas UK
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Role
Creative Strategist
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Industry
Sports & Fitness
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Market
United Kingdom
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Investment
$$4M + Total Campaign
Check out another project.
04. Social Reels
The promoted reels leaned into mood over message. Quick, branded executions designed to feel native within the feed rather than interruptive. The product stayed present without being pushed. Even short-form content felt like part of a larger system rather than standalone ads.