Adidas Skateboarding – Brand Spotlight

Adidas Skateboarding – Brand Spotlight

Article by Rohum Pourtahmasbi

Well, here it is… Skate Pharm are now proud stockists of Adidas Skateboarding and we couldn’t be more stoked. I mean, let’s face it, Adidas have always put out great footwear even before they entered skateboarding which is why they base the majority of their skateboarding footwear on older designs. (This says a lot about their timeless style).

Anyway, with every new drop of stock must come a piece on said brand and for this article, we have decided to focus on Adidas’ portfolio of advertisements, videos and a team that convinced us easily enough to provide you all with their product.

Team

As it stands, Adidas’ team is made up of: Mark Gonzales, Dennis Busenitz, Silas Baxter-Neal, Lucas Puig, Rodrigo TX, Pete Eldridge, Benny Fairfax, Nestor Judkins, Mark Suciu, Jake Donnelly, Lem Villemin, Alec Majerus, Chewy Cannon, Klaus Bohms, Raul Navarro, Günes Özdogan, Dennis Durrant, Na-Kel Smith, Tyshawn Jones, Miles Silvas and Kevin Lowry. Phew! Long list right?

Don’t be fooled, Adidas don’t mess about… Every one of these riders well and truly deserve their spot on the team and continue to prove so by consistently producing coverage through video parts, covers and that Insta-Hype.

Videos

Speaking of video parts, it looks as though Adidas are actually filming for their own video at the moment and with a team as packed as theirs you know it’s going to be memorable… Let’s take a look at some of their previous video’s shall we? Dating back to iTunes’ Podcast days (Does anyone even use them anymore?), Adidas would often produce short web videos to promote their skateboarding range before finally filming for a full length feature called ‘Diagonal’ that came out in 2009. This included UK representatives: Benny Fairfax and Chewy Cannon.

Although this video focused on the European team, it still gave Chewy the opportunity to come out on top, thus pushing him into the limelight of Europe for his unique style and general gangstaness (Not sure if that’s a real word?) Soon after Diagonal was released, the internet began taking over as the most popular base for media production in well, the world!

Digital cameras were now the practiced format and YouTube was the new DVD player which meant Adidas began to focus on producing short web videos. However, unlike most companies out there that just pump out clips willy nilly without a care in the world… Adidas decided to treat themselves with respect by producing clean, artistic features that would rarely come out, yet make an impact that would stand longer than a week. We’ve made a list of some of our favourite web videos from Adidas over the past few years, so clickety click on the links shown below to distract yourself from work while you can!

Adidas Skateboarding Lucas & Friends Roadtrip


Shown above is Lucas Puig and friends road trip around the South of France which came out in 2012 to showcase his new pro model. It was this video that would see Lucas explore his DIY spot ‘The Office’ and elaborate on – Who doesn’t like titties, right?

Philadelphia With Mark Suciu


This next link will take you through to ‘Philadelphia With Mark Suciu’, a video many would agree perfectly displays Mark’s unique style the skateboarding world has become very fond of. Mark has always been this good and thankfully this video helped draw everybody’s attention to him thus pushing him into the pro ranks soon after, hell yeah!

Adidas Skateboarding Silas SLR


This one was quite different… As Silas Baxter-Neal introduced his latest shoe the ‘Silas SLR’, it turned out he had just finished building his very own skatepark, so of course they were going to use that to their advantage! However, while skate park footage isn’t often the popular method of showcasing a new product, this edit was very unique as the film making behind it was extremely different from anything skateboarders had ever seen. While most would consider it ‘arty farty’, Adidas were still able to take something extremely simple and turn it into an extremely pleasing visual maser piece. The Allah Las and Silas make a perfect combination too, so click through to check it out now!

Adidas Skateboarding New Stripes


Moving on to a more recent video of Adidas’, ‘New Stripes’ took the skateboarding world by storm as it introduced three of the most popular skateboarders to their team – Na-Kel Smith, Miles Silvas and Tyshawn Jones. Since their debut in William Strobeck’s ‘Supreme – Cherry’, Na-Kel Smith and Tyshawn Jones were now among the most cloned skateboarders around as now everybody wanted to be them…

Not pointing fingers, but it worked out in their favour and when news reached out that they had been added to Adidas’ team, well… Click through for the hype!

Adidas Skateboarding Benny & Chewy Palace


So, here’s the video that changed quite a lot, The Palace and Adidas collaboration project that focused on Benny Fairfax and Chewy Cannon. Rad skating, crazy visual effects and Skepta. Only not just any Skepta song, THE Skepta song. We could go on to explain how this turned every skateboarder in to a ‘road-man’, but acting like a waste man… You get the picture.

This video was undeniably sick and we have to admit this song has been played a few times in the shop (It gets you hyped, what can we say?), so click through for the mayhem and we promise you’ll want to skate after this! Just try not to film anything with that god awful VHS app to imitate this please!

Advertisements

Anyway, moving on from all of that boring stuff… Adverts! Yay… No, Adidas genuinely don’t make boring adverts, instead Adidas have made some extremely unique and even hilarious advertisements that genuinely sell the product to you. We’ve chosen a few of our favourite advertisements that Adidas have released over the past few years to show you.

Adidas Skateboarding The Legend Of Stan Smith


Our top pick would have to be ‘The Legend Of Stan Smith’. In 2014, Adidas decided to introduce the classic Stan Smith tennis shoe to their skateboarding range. Remember what we said about old Adidas shoes inspiring current skateboarding shoes? Well this is a true testament to that statement. They didn’t even change anything about the shoe it was just that perfect for skateboarding!

What made this advert stand out was the fact that they actually used the professional tennis player Stan Smith to showcase the product as the whole team conceptualised an entire ghost career for him in skateboarding – Nestor Judkins even dressed up as him and skated around New York to create false archive footage of him! It worked extremely well as the story seemed feasible and even managed to fool a few people who thought the story was genuine… Just in case you watched it and thought that story was true, we should probably tell you that
Santa doesn’t exist either – Sorry.

Adidas Skateboarding Busenitz ADV


This next advert focuses on Dennis Busenitz latest pro model, the ‘Busenitz ADV’. What was unique about this advertisement was that it used extreme slow mo to capture Busenitz’s line, the only way I can imagine you’d see anything he does considering how fast the guy skates…

Although this may seem quite boring, it was actually one of the first adverts that really used this technique to showcase a product in practice. Anyway, it’s Busenitz! How could he ever be boring?

We hope you enjoyed the clips, you can check out our full range of Adidas products by following the link below:

Adidas Skateboarding
http://skatepharm.co.uk/adidas/