Adidas Odds Launch Evens The Score

Comprising two beautifully made films, the campaign extends the brand’s message ‘no athlete left behind’ and is the result of a collaboration between adidas, Mumbai agency Taproot Dentsu and Carat Media to introduce a simple, but genius, product – a pair of two right, or two left, shoes for para-athletes, primarily blade runners.

In the wake of the 2016 Paralympic Games, it’s part of a welcome drive to increase positive representations of disabled people in advertising and it also caters for them – after all, not every runner needs a standard pair of trainers. 

The first film, directed by Veneet Bagga of Nomad Films India, features the inspiring amputee and war hero Major DP Singh. It follows a day in his life as he pushes himself to run ‘against the odds’ – odds he has battled since 1999 when, while serving in the Kargil War on the India-Pakistan border, a mortar bomb shattered his bones and ripped through his intestines.

Aged just 25, Singh was declared dead by an army surgeon and dispatched to the mortuary, but he refused to die, and after years of painful surgery and rehabilitation became India’s first blade runner to complete a half marathon, he's run 12 of them since. "Losing a part of the body does not lead to disability. Losing the will to fight out odds, does," says Singh. "Celebrate odds and be the winner. If you wish to give up anything, give up giving up. That's the message I wish to give everyone. And that's the reason I run every day." 

A second film (above) takes a different approach and tells the story of athletic endeavor from the point of view of each one of a pair of running shoes owned by a para-athlete, the script cleverly employing metaphors inspired by odds and evens.