adidas — Berlin Virtual Races

As one of the main sponsors of the BMW Berlin-Marathon, adidas wanted to take the energy of one of the world’s fastest, most prestigious races and open it up to runners everywhere. The goal was to extend the marathon beyond Berlin, grow the adidas Running app community, and showcase its first adaptive training plans.

We created a global virtual race series, giving anyone, anywhere, the chance to run their own Berlin with the chance to win an invitation to next year’s race. For many, this offered rare access to a major marathon that usually requires strict qualification standards.

We created a fully connected digital campaign across app, CRM, social, and OOH, from hype films and reactive content to city-wide visibility and in-store activations. To bring the journey to life, we invited two beginner runners to train for the real marathon using the newly launched adaptive training plans, a first-of-its-kind feature in the adidas Running app that adjusts to your progress in real time. Proving that progress is personal, and speed is for everyone.

In parallel, we captured the elite story in real time, activating when Tigist Assefa broke the world record and sharing her run data straight from the app.
The result: a 50,000-runner race became a global movement.

We took a 50,000-runner race in Berlin and turned it into a global movement
Berlin set the pace. Runners worldwide followed.

500K+ sign-ups — adidas’ most successful virtual race series to date
45K+ raffle entries — highest-performing raffle ever
2.5 Million+ ad impressions across digital channels
3.9 Million OOH impressions in Berlin alone