The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2024–2025
adidas launches the Desert Runner inside a 100-metre desert mural
A giant anamorphic earth artwork by David Popa turned the UAE desert into the launch canvas for the Adizero Desert Runner.
adidas
What it had to solve
adidas designed the limited-edition Adizero Desert Runner around the resilience and beauty of the UAE's desert, with a colour palette drawn from the landscape and eco-friendly materials. A launch film alone would have wasted that territory, so the brand looked for an activation that made the desert itself the stage.
How it works
The Adizero Desert Runner was adidas's answer to the UAE's extreme running environment — a limited edition whose palette, materials and spirit all came from the desert. A normal launch film would have shown the landscape from a distance, so Havas Creative Middle East instead asked what the shoe would look like if the desert itself carried the announcement.
The answer was a collaboration with David Popa, an artist known for earth murals made from natural pigments and found materials. Over nine days, three artists and technicians constructed a 100-metre-wide anamorphic artwork in Sharjah's Al Madam desert, engineered so the sneaker's form resolved only from the right viewpoint, emerging from the sand rather than being printed onto it.
Nothing in the activation was CGI; the artwork physically existed in the landscape, and a documentary released around the launch preserved the construction process. The work took three pieces of recognition at the Loeries 2025 awards, including a Silver in environmental graphics, and gave the region's runners a reason to drive into the desert to see their shoe drawn at monumental scale.
Why it lands
- Building the artwork on the actual desert ground made the launch inseparable from the product's inspiration — the story and the stage were the same place.
- The anamorphic form rewarded the audience's effort: the image only resolved from the right position, turning discovery into a journey.
- Choosing a land artist who works with natural materials kept the activation consistent with the shoe's eco-friendly story.
- Because the mural was real rather than rendered, the documentary and photography carried an authenticity no CGI launch could match.
What it did
The mural turned a product launch into a site-specific artwork that existed on the same land that inspired the design, and the campaign around it was recognised at the Loeries 2025 awards with a Silver in graphic design for posters and environmental graphics, a craft certificate for OOH art direction, and a Bronze in ambient out-of-home.
What you can take
When the terrain inspired the product, put the launch back on that terrain: an artwork the audience has to travel to see makes the product's origin story physical.
Since then
The Al Madam artwork launched the Adizero Desert Runner collection in November 2024, with a short documentary following in the days after to show how the mural was built. At the Loeries 2025 awards the campaign collected a Silver in graphic design for posters and environmental graphics, a craft certificate for OOH art direction and a Bronze in ambient, cementing the Desert Runner as an example of letting the product's inspiration be the medium of its own launch.
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