Adidas Goes Guerilla Gardening
by Bonnie Alter, London 
on 04.21.08
Here's an ad campaign for Adidas new eco range, Grun, that is bringing together quite a few green concepts into one curious melange. First we've got the product--Adidas has a a new line of shoes which are made from recycled and natural materials. They are also making clothing from hemp and bamboo; the new Reground range is fully biodegradable, including the first ever completely biodegradable zipper. Their Recycled line is made of materials such as old tires. Then the advertising and green link: they have joined up with dazed & confused (magazine) to encourage people to do guerilla gardening in grim and ugly places; swapping spray cans and tags for seeds and bulbs. Submit a picture of your efforts and the ten winners get a discount on any Adidas gear.
Then they have added a sculptural "art" element--this sinister looking "hand" (pictured) made of wicker and wire is 12 feet high and is perched on a shop roof, overlooking a busy street in London's hip east end, as part of the promotion. Another creation, now gone, was a skip full of flowers. They are planning ten more of these around town. It's all interesting, but what it adds up to is a bit of a confusing mish mash of green elements. :: Dazed
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While I commend their production of a more ecological trainer their mish mash of green tinged messages used to advertise them are disappointing and at worst damaging the movements and issues they have appropriated. Adidas have not been guerrilla gardening. Their ivy clad billboard, their skip filled with flowers and their twiggy hand are not guerrilla gardening. They would more accurately be described as "legitimate flower arranging" or "guerrilla marketing".
I am a guerrilla gardener and last September Adidas wrote to me asking for my help. When they presented their plan to me I advised them not to go ahead with the guerrilla gardening theme for the campaign because it was lacking in authenticity... something I thought Adidas cared about a lot.
I know a lot about guerrilla gardening. Through my website http://www.guerrillagardening.org I have corresponded with and met many guerrilla gardeners around the world. What we all share in common is that at some point we have cultivated someone else's land without asking for their permission. The land is usually neglected and our cultivation is usually committed gardening. I won't go into the reasons why we do this here but this global movement has generated a great deal of positive media interest in the last couple of years and perhaps because of this Adidas's ad agencies in both the UK and Germany approached me directly to help launch their new eco shoes. But this was not to help us continue our work or spread our message but to lend a smidgen of authenticity to an otherwise mischievous and cynical marketing contrivance! They had a finished short film script about guerrilla gardening and big name director on board to shoot a fake documentary. They needed real guerrilla gardeners (under 25 and all wearing Adidas) to be in it to give it an air of authenticity. To read the script visit (http://www.guerrillagardening.org/adidas_fake_doc.pdf) I suggested this was insufficient authenticity and that guerrilla gardening is too unpredictable to be scripted to precisely. Going ahead would be dubious for us and for them... but they went ahead. A couple of weeks ago I noticed their finished film went up on You Tube posted (or 'seeded' one might say in marketing terms) by "GuerrillaGardener1". A week later Dazed and Confused asked me to promote their competition on my website and proudly shared with me mock ups of their "guerrilla gardening" commissions by artists... who it seems know very little about the realities of guerrilla gardening. They are making temporary flower arrangements... not gardening by most green fingered standards.
If Adidas's campaign really does encourage people to transform neglected patches of land with plants in a way that enhances the environment then their fake documentary, their silly art commissions and their pushy manners will not matter one jot. My concern, and my reason for blabbering on here, is that their big marketing mish-mash makes guerrilla gardening a mish-mash and so confuses those who might otherwise get involved in transforming land for good (whether they wear new trendy eco shoes or traditional rubber wellingtons while they do it).
Richard
thanks for blabbering. the ad campaign does seem to confuse the issue, and it's more about making them look cool, than being real. sorry about that.
well, here's to real changes, and positive impacts, regardless of branded sponsors.
best of luck.
Richard, we wanted to translate your comment into German for our blog Nachhall-Texter, because there were a couple of critical voices in Germany as well. We could not find the pdf-Document you were referring to in your post.
http://www.nachhall-texter.de/2008/05/07/adidas-und-guerilla-gardening/
Cheers
kasi
Well, it's gotta be positive that big companies like this are beginning to realise the 'green' consumer out there has buying power, though it does seem they are using a touch of 'greenwash' to gain some marketing hype rather than make any radical steps in a greed direction.
Hopefully if this does have some success for them they will start making more green products and invest in this market to make their products even greener.
All journeys start with a small step!
I got the link wrong for the pdf of the Adidas script. It can be found at http://www.guerrillagardening.org/media/adidas_fake_doc.pdf
Hopefully if this does have some success for them they will start making more green products and invest in this market to make their products even greener.
All journeys start with a small step!
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