Adidas & Japan Football Association - Sky Comic sets a Guinness book of Records

Marketing campaigns often receive accolades and awards, but it isn’t often that they set a world record in the process. Well, the Guinness book of Records ad set a Guinness world record with their own one second commercial- and now Adidas has set the record for the worlds largest comic!

On May 25, adidas Japan and TBWA\HAKUHODO finished their world largest comic. As the final piece of their lead-up activity to the 2010 South Africa World Cup thirteen massive comic frames, each featuring the individual members of the Japan National Football Team along with messages of encouragement from supporters, were combined into not only an amazing show of national support but also the world’s largest comic strip. It was lit up in the early morning for the National Team to view as they departed from Haneda airpot to South Africa.

Guinness World Records was on site to verify that adidas Sky Comic, with a total area measuring 3,785 square meters (40,745 square feet), has been recorded as the World’s Largest Comic Strip.

“Our objective was to build on the exciting global campaigns that we are running here in Japan and enhance them by making them even more relevant locally. We wanted to inspire supporters to come together and get behind the team on their journey to the World Cup and ensure an impactful and memorable send off for the team” said Dave Thomas, Vice President, Sport Performance adidas Japan. “By focusing on schools and regions which the team members are from, we have been able to engage the public in a sincere and innovative way to further reinforce why adidas is the leading football brand from the national level to a grassroots level.”

In preparation for the upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, a series of activities were launched based on adidas’ global campaign, including an animated comic series that tells the story of Japan’s journey to World Cup in the popular manga style, a fully integrated website/mobile initiative for supporter interactivity, and the “adidas Sky Comic” project. The “adidas Sky Comic” project spaned thirteen cities across Japan over five weeks with over 13,000 participants. The individual panels were shot from a balloon and uploaded to a dedicated adidas and JFA website as a digital comic book.

“The amazing part of this was the world record aspect was never part of the plan. As the project evolved and we saw more support, more participants, we actually realized we had something bigger on our hands than we expected,” said Luis DeAnda COO, TBWA\HAKUHODO. “At one point we all said, “This is huge! Feels like a world record of some sort.” We did our calculations on the final piece, did a quick search, and applied. It was just the perfect recognition of a project that was created by the joint efforts of adidas and the national supporters.”

Client: adidas Japan
Product: adidas x JFA（Japan Football Association）
Project title: Sky Comic
Brand Agency：TBWA HAKUHODO
Comic Artist: “TERU” Terukazu Matori (Masu Comix)
Production Company: Monster Ultra
Website Production: Formes inc.
BTS Production: Cocoon
Printing: Magic Touch

TBWA HAKUHODO staff
Creative Director: Kazoo Sato
Copy Writer: Hideyuki Tanaka, Masaharu Kumagai
Art Director Hirofumi Nakajima, Haruhito Nisawadaira, Katsuhiro Shimizu, Keisuke Shimizu
Account Director: Taro Sato
Digital Producer: Shintaro Takeuchi
PR Kayoko Asano

Production Staff
Producer: Kentaro Kinoshita, Makiko Okada(Monster Ultra, Inc.)
Production Manager: Hideki Harada, Mona Yamamoto(Monster Ultra, Inc.)
Digital Producer: Jun Ino(Formes Inc.)
Web Producer: Keitaro Takahashi(Formes Inc.)
Interactive Developer: Shunsuke Ohba(Formes Inc.)
Web Director : Hironori Sugie(Formes Inc.)
Music: Atsushi Shimomura(Sosa., Inc.)
Producer (BTS): Ippei Kobayashi(Cocoon)
Director (BTS): Hiromi Watanabe(Cocoon)
Printing Director: Takeshi Hara, Michitake Hatae, Takaki Torigoe, Shotaro Handa, Masamune Sato(Magic Touch)
Comic Artist Coodination: Shuhei Kaminaga(Orbit)