Bullets before cannonballs

08 Jun, 2026

Tracksuit pondering which brand will win the World Cup:

Happy FIFA World Cup to those who celebrate – including the marketers trying to “tap into” this cultural moment, as they say. The real marketing winner of the World Cup so far has been Adidas, which launched its campaign with a five-minute film called “Backyard Legends”, with Timothee Chalamet starring as the organizer of a neighborhood match, trying to defeat a legendary street football trio that has gone unbeaten for 30 years. Plus, Bad Bunny! It’s nostalgic; it’s got you rooting for the underdog; it’s entertaining. And people love it.

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In comparison, Nike has decided to forgo the Big Campaign, swapping it for “[unexpected collabs and cultural expressions] with teased celebrities like Cristiano Ronaldo, Kim Kardashian, Travis Scott and more.

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So what makes a bigger impact? Can a Big Moment like Adidas’ five-minute commercial still make a dent in our fractured media landscape, or does it make more sense to spread your resources around, making smaller swings but covering more ground?

Tracksuit frames this as a choice between the Big Campaign and smaller cultural swings. But Nike did not choose.

The cultural collisions, collabs and content were the bullets. Then came the cannonball.

"Rip The Script" is Nike doing what Nike does: turning sport into cinema, celebrity, music, meme, archive and product launch all at once.

With "Backyard Legends", Adidas crafted a carousel but Nike made the bigger attention engine.

Views are not everything, obviously. But 64M views in four days versus 6.6M in a month is hardly insignificant ¹.

Especially when the sentiment data says Adidas still has a conversion problem and Nike is still the brand more people think is "for them".

To close the gap on Nike, Adidas needs to improve its top-of-funnel conversion rate. Adidas currently converts 67% of consumers from awareness to consideration, compared to Nike’s 76%. The brand also has much lower Preference than Nike, with 34% of consumers in this category preferring Nike compared to 12% for Adidas. It’s not a coincidence that both Nike and Adidas lean strongly into underdog stories. For the Sportswear category, “Is for people like me” is the highest conversion driver, meaning fostering relatability is key to winning in this category. Amongst people that consider the brand, 60% of people think Nike is “for them”, as opposed to 56% for Adidas. (Tracksuit data: May ‘25 to April ‘26)

The lesson is not bullets versus cannonballs. It is bullets before cannonballs.

Small cultural probes to find the range.

Then fire the big thing.

PSA: As of writing, the Brahma commercial remains undefeated in this World Cup of ads.