Fifa World Cup 2026<\/a>. They are, of course, Lionel Messi and Bad Bunny, just two of a glittering cast of stars and world-class athletes that also includes Jude Bellingham, Lamine Yamal and Trinity Rodman.<\/p>\nBy the magic of post-production, David Beckham, Zidane and Alessandro del Piero also appear, looking just as they did in the 1990s. Sharp-eyed viewers might also catch cameo appearances from Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9, Raphinha, Pedri, Florian Wirtz and Santiago Gim\u00e9nez.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really was a special one for us,\u201d says JD Jurentkuff, chief creative officer of Lola USA, speaking from the agency\u2019s new Los Angeles office. Launched earlier this year, Lola USA brings together parts of 180 US and Adam&EveDDB New York as the North American arm of the Madrid-born creative agency. \u2018Backyard Legends\u2019 was its first major piece of work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were working on it for over 20 months. Credit to Adidas for really trying to bring its partners in and expose us to as much of the Adidas philosophy as possible. It took us to factories and flew us to Herzogenaurach, Germany, to see the climate-controlled archive.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a white-glove experience. There are rows and rows of jerseys and bags and cleats. We saw all the old balls, the iconic US kits from 1994. All sorts of great little bits of Adidas history that we\u2019ve sprinkled throughout that film.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adidas\u2019s team of football experts also gave vital insight into some of the archetypes that appear, such as the tekkers, the bruisers, the skins and the guys in jeans.<\/p>\n
Before going any further, Jurentkuff is keen to fill in the backstory behind Adidas\u2019s \u2018You Got This\u2019 positioning. Research shows that a lot of young people are dropping out of sport at an early age. From parents giving lectures on the way home from a game to social media images and private coaches for children as young as seven or eight, many just feel it\u2019s no fun any more.<\/p>\n
The backyard \u2013 or, as Chalamet calls it, \u201ca patch of concrete between apartment buildings\u201d \u2013 is the one place where there is no pressure and no rules. That became the central idea for the new ad, a revolutionary approach given that Adidas has a roster of some of the biggest and best football stars in the world to put in the spotlight.<\/p>\n
This \u201cthing\u201d that \u201cends today\u201d turns out to be a three-on-three match against a legendary group of anonymous players \u2013 Ruthie, Isaac and Clive \u2013 who have been unbeaten under street rules for more than 30 years. Chalamet plays a highly strung superfan-manager who has assembled his dream team to try to end their winning streak.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s clearly stressed after promising that they\u2019re on the way, but not everyone has turned up. Only Rodman and Bellingham are squeezed into his beat-up old car. We see him tapping the battered steering wheel in frustration as they wait for Yamal.<\/p>\n
Snapping tetchily at the superstars who would normally be treated with fawning admiration, Chalamet relates the history of the legendary \u201clocal crew.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cut to flashback (\u201c1996 or maybe 1995, I don\u2019t argue about it,\u201d according to Chalamet), the camera points to the sky to show a ball falling to earth and landing beneath Clive\u2019s boot. In one of many Easter eggs for diehard football fans, it\u2019s the black-and-white USA 1994 World Cup ball. Other designs from different years can be spotted throughout the film.<\/p>\n
Chalamet relates how Isaac, Ruthie and Clive took down all comers, year after year, including Beckham, Del Piero and Zidane in 2002, all told in breathless awe as though every word is true.<\/p>\n
\n Want to go deeper? Ask The Drum<\/p>\n
Jurentkuff tells The Drum: \u201cIt was so bold of Adidas to say, \u2018We\u2019re not going to make the spot about how great they are, but about a group of kids who have been playing in the backyard and haven\u2019t been beaten in 30 years.\u2019 Once we had that nugget and built around that, it just opened up so many things for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Central to the spot is Chalamet\u2019s \u201cunreliable narrator\u201d who tells these outrageously exaggerated stories. There\u2019s one in every state and every town \u2013 urban legends about a crew who could beat the best in the world, if only they had the chance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like a big unlock for us,\u201d says Jurentkuff. \u201cYou take that pressure off the athletes to carry the whole story. You allow them to show up as themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine the film without Chalamet as the superfan-manager setting up the final showdown \u2013 and, indeed, he was the first choice for the part. \u201cAuthenticity is so important to Adidas and Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet has so much credibility as a fan. He gave us even more than we could have hoped for,\u201d says Jurentkuff.<\/p>\n
At one point, Chalamet starts riffing in French and English about Zizou. \u201cThat was him,\u201d says Jurentkuff. \u201cHe was like, \u2018Hey, I\u2019ve got an idea about this Zidane thing. I\u2019m gonna crank it up\u2019 and, of course, we just let him run with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Securing Chalamet and director Mark Molloy was only possible because of the exceptionally long lead time on a shoot that spanned four cities and two continents. \u201cThe majority of the film was shot in Spain, in Madrid and Barcelona,\u201d says Jurentkuff. \u201cEverybody is busy and it\u2019s hard to get them in the same place. We did shoot Messi and Bad Bunny down in Miami, then Timoth\u00e9e, we ended up shooting in Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Award-winning director Mark Molloy was the natural choice to handle the challenges. Not only could he handle dialogue and long-form storytelling, as shown by his Apple Underdogs films, which won a Cannes Film Grand Prix, but he also had experience placing people in scenes they were never actually in, thanks to his work on Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, which is set in Detroit and shot largely in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
That extended to characters who weren\u2019t even on set at all, such as \u2018Buzzcut Beckham,\u2019 \u2018Blonde Beckham\u2019 and \u2018Mohawk Beckham,\u2019 who look convincingly real. Molloy brought in Untold Studios, where Ben Hampshire led the work of building the younger David Beckham.<\/p>\n
Jurentkuff is candid about how much of that effect was manufactured: \u201cA little bit of wizardry, or maybe a lot of wizardry, from some of our partners.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beckham himself was involved throughout, but not in the way viewers might assume. \u201cWe had his oversight, we had his buy-in, we had his approval, but we didn\u2019t actually have him on set for those scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Molloy also came up with one of the funniest moments. The game is about to start, Clive shouts \u201cAuntie\u201d and the film cuts to a living room full of footballs, with a middle-aged woman sitting in a comfy chair, wearing a pair of slippers. She looks up from her phone and nonchalantly kicks a ball out of the window. We then realize that the balls falling from the sky have been coming from her top-floor apartment.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s when the film ends, with the strapline \u2018You Got This.\u2019 Rodman, Yamal and Bellingham are now carrying the torch from Zidane, Beckham and Del Piero, who appeared in iconic Adidas ads of the 1990s. But we don\u2019t get to see whether the 21st-century stars can beat the crew.<\/p>\n
Acclaim for the ad has been stratospheric. On Instagram, it was the most-liked post Adidas has ever released. Sales are reportedly strong, too. But for Jurentkuff, the validation that meant the most was a message from his old client and good friend Tor Myhren, Apple\u2019s vice-president of marketing communications.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a text from Tor and he said, \u2018Hey, man, I haven\u2019t been this jealous of a piece of work in a long, long time.\u2019 And that felt just so good because I know his creative bar is so high.\u201d<\/p>\n
The message carried particular weight because Jurentkuff had spent years learning what that creative bar looked like at TBWA\\Media Arts Lab, where he worked as creative director alongside global chief creative officer Brett Anderson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went there to have the opportunity to work with the highest-level creatives on the planet. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. There\u2019s such a dedication to craft there and I was lucky enough to see what great looks like. Kudos to my team at Lola and my ECD, Mike Bachman, who brought that same mentality to spending the time to mold and craft this film.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Backyard Legends\u2019 was the first major work released by Lola USA, the agency\u2019s newly formed US operation, arriving just two weeks after its launch was announced. \u201cThat was intentional,\u201d says Jurentkuff. \u201cWe wanted to launch with something to share with the world and get our name out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
That strategy certainly paid off, bringing a lot of awareness to the newly formed agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve made a lot of new friends, talked to a lot of different brands and generated a lot of new business,\u201d says Jurentkuff. \u201cWe have a very clear focus with this idea of \u2018Crazy Ambition Makes Serious Things Happen.\u2019 It\u2019s our North Star, where we always want to be pushing creatively, but we know you\u2019ve got to move the needle.\u201d<\/p>\n
It sounds like we\u2019ll be seeing a lot more legendary work from Lola in the seasons to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI know about football, Benito, football,\u201d growls Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, speaking so fast into his phone that you\u2019d almost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21254],"tags":[21290,50128,29907],"class_list":["post-66671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-adidas","tag-adidas","tag-anatomy-of-an-ad","tag-creative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}