Adidas
How to Stop Sweden
A football jersey printed with the most confident scouting guide ever made, launched with SvFF ahead of the Women's Euros 2022.
Challenge
Sweden is an unusually open country that also happens to have one of the best women's national football teams in the world. Ahead of the Euros 2022, adidas needed to fire up the football community around a team that was already among the strongest internationally. The campaign had to put sports performance at the centre.
Solution
We worked with adidas and SvFF to publish exactly how to stop the Swedish team: strengths, weaknesses and counter-strategies, printed straight onto the jersey and online for anyone to read. The guide analysed the team and its players, and the jersey became the most confident football jersey ever made. The sugar-coated arrogance of the campaign put sports performance, not equality, at the centre.
Results
The campaign advanced the tone of women's football marketing and upped the stakes going into the championship. The guide was published in full, on the jersey and online, and anyone could read exactly how the Swedish team could be stopped. The result is cultural: a higher bar for how women's football is marketed and discussed.
