What it had to solve
adidas wanted a Dubai collaboration that felt like the city: home to over fifty immigrant nationalities. Partnering with yet another artist wouldn't represent the people who actually live there.
The idea
adidas redesigned the Superstar around Dubai's 42-year-old Ravi restaurant — original logo, waiter-uniform green, and 40-year menu on the shoe.
How it works
Havas Middle East rebuilt the sneaker from Ravi's real identity — original Ravi logo replacing the Originals badge, a new green matched to waiter uniforms, and the restaurant's 40-year-old menu printed on the tongue — then launched through streetwear retailers, murals, local influencers, and partners like Esquire and GQ.
What it did
Sold out in 15 minutes online, set the longest-queue record at the Dubai flagship store, resold for over 100x retail, with 32.3M social reach and $6.7M PR value; later won Dubai Lynx Grands Prix for Integrated, PR, Entertainment and Creative Strategy.
Background
In 2022 adidas was looking for a collaboration that could represent Dubai — a city built by migrants from more than fifty nationalities, most of them far from home. The obvious move was another artist or celebrity tie-up, but that felt disconnected from the people the brand wanted to reach.
Havas Middle East proposed the opposite: Ravi, a no-frills Pakistani street-food restaurant in Al-Satwa that had fed cab drivers, construction workers, artists and CEOs for 42 years. adidas redesigned its Superstar sneaker around the restaurant — replacing the Originals logo with Ravi's original one, mixing a new shade to match waiters' uniforms, and printing the unchanged 40-year menu on the tongue.
The launch leaned on streetwear retailers, murals, local influencers and press partners rather than paid media. The shoes sold out online in 15 minutes, broke the record for the longest queue at the Dubai flagship store, and started reselling for more than a hundred times retail.
The idea reframed a brand collab as a tribute to a community institution, and the work went on to win Grands Prix at Dubai Lynx for Integrated, PR, Entertainment and Creative Strategy, plus a Bronze PR Lion at Cannes.
Why it lands
A restaurant as the collab partner was genuinely unexpected — the opposite of the celebrity-capsule playbook, which is what made it newsworthy.
Every detail on the shoe (original logo, uniform green, printed menu) came from Ravi's real identity, so the story could not be accused of being fake.
It gave Dubai's immigrant majority a brand object that represented their own history of the city, not the glitzy skyline version.
Scarcity plus earned media — 15-minute sellout, record queues, 100x resale — turned a local tribute into a global drop.
What you can take
The most resonant collab partner is often the institution your audience already loves. Use its real details — logo, uniform, menu; the authenticity itself becomes the media.
Since then
The Superstar Ravi resold for over a hundred times its retail price on aftermarket sites and Ravi Restaurant gained thousands of new followers. adidas carried the momentum through 2023–2024, was named Dubai Lynx Advertiser of the Year 2025, and collected 43 awards across Dubai Lynx and Cannes in three years. The case became a regional reference point for brand collaborations and was also cited at ADFEST and The One Show.
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