Adidas scraps planned Phillips Idowu ad
Adidas is changing the strapline it is to use for tomorrow’s (9 August) Metro cover wrap featuring Team GB athelete Phillips Idowu to read ‘Take the Pain’ instead of ‘Take the Gold’ after the triple jumper failed to claim a place in the Olympic final.
Idowu, who is one of several Team GB athletes fronting Adidas’ ‘Take the Stage’ Olympic campaign, finished outside the top 12 triple jumpers in Tuesday”s (7 August) qualifying competition.
The triple jumper’s face, one of 17 illustrations of Team GB athletes running throughout the Games, was intended to depict the athlete’s desire to win a gold medal at London 2012. However, the sports brand made a “last-minute” change to the advert’s strapline after the Idowu failed to make the final, according to a spokesman.
He added that the cover wrap was now more in-line with Phillip’s current situation of overcoming the “pain of not making it past the qualifying rounds.”
“Prior to the triple-jump event Phillip’s mantra for the Metro cover was to ‘Take the Gold’ and we’ve changed that so it now reads ‘Take the Pain’. We haven’t changed the creative just the mantra that goes with it.”
Adidas insists that the East-London born athlete’s performance will not affect any of its remaining sponsorship activity around the Games and says Idowu is still “valuable to us” as a brand ambassador for future campaigns.
The spokesman adds: “We’re clearly disappointed for him in how things worked out but this is sport and the nature of the area we work in. We’re not going to be dropping him from our brands because he’s still valuable to us.”
