Many brands rushed into the NFT space in 2021 as tokenized digital assets were yielding billions of dollars’ worth of monthly sales—but none did it quite like apparel giant Adidas, which partnered with Web3-native brands and personalities on a high-profile collaboration.
In December of that year, Adidas launched its Into the Metaverse campaign alongside the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project, Punks Comic (a derivative CryptoPunks project), and pseudonymous NFT influencer gmoney. The Bored Apes had only been minted months prior, and the entire NFT space was still very new and volatile.
For Erika Wykes-Sneyd, then the global VP of marketing for Adidas Originals and now global VP and GM of Adidas /// Studios (a.k.a. Three Stripes Studios), the collaborative approach felt right—but signing a deal with pseudonymous creators in a nascent space was still risky.
“It really started with our values, and it did feel right at the time, even though there were many late nights where I was like: I could get fired for this,” she said on Decrypt’s gm podcast.
She pointed to Adidas…