Sports brands have long tread on difficult, sometimes contradictory ground between performance clothing and fashion. I remember many many years ago my mum refusing to buy me a pair of Adidas Samba when I was a kid. She insisted very sensibly that despite being made by a sportswear company the shoes were badly designed and would damage my feet.
That opinion's recently been backed up by a bevy of TikTok fashion influencers, and – it seems – now even by Adidas itself. In what must be one of the most misjudged brand social media reactions in recent history, the sportswear giant has suggested that you “Gotta sacrifice for the look”.
The TikTokker Mengyan Yu posted a video in which she said that the popular Adidas Samba sneakers looked cute but were cutting her heel. Adidas's social media team may have thought its response an offhand comment, but it should have realised how this would blow up. Reinforcing a negative review could be seen as refreshingly honest, but it doesn't look good for a brand that's supposed to make clothes that are precisely engineered for comfort and performance to effectively admitted that its bestselling shoe is initially painful to wear and is mainly about looks.
Unsurprisingly, the response was soon picked up and reposted across other social media channels. Some people have suggested that Adidas will have seen the various brands that have adopted an irreverent or even "snarky" tone in their social media presence (Ryan Air comes to mind). "That's why it's important to set parameters for TOV on social! I'm unsure if this is their usual tone for engagements, but even if it is…it’s cringe," one person wrote.
As several people have commented, the incident shows that sometimes it's best not to respond if there's no positive to gain from the situation.
For more recent brand controversy, see the shocked response to the Apple iPad Pro ad.
