Brief

Build a campaign for a brand new collaboration between EA Games and Adidas, launching limited edition football shirts in both digital and physical spaces.

Approach

Using the full might of our design team, we turbocharged shoot footage using flash, typography, motion graphics, 3D and illustration.

Impact

A modular, attention grabbing series of films that ran across social platforms and shattered client expectations. Total video views: over 19 million. Total engagements: over 2.4 million. Shirts: sold out!

Client

EA SPORTS x Adidas

Brand

EA SPORTS x Adidas

Production Company

The Mill

Director

Oliver Davies / Stip / Tom Dibb (Creative Director), The Mill

Capabilities

Ideation / Creative Direction / Direction / Production / Design / VFX / Editorial / Colour

Why would we fire Marcelo into space? Or melt Dybala into liquid? Why command a team of leopards or absorb the power of a star?

It all comes down to attention.

When we met the client for the first time they were interested in complex post-production and choreographed action sequences. They were thinking about epic camera moves and photorealistic morphing techniques.

Naturally, this was music to our ears. But as we learned more about our audience we found ourselves pulling in a different direction.

Our target demographic skewed young, male and extremely online. They spent many hours a day on social networks and chased limited edition streetwear from the likes of Supreme and Palace. What they didn’t do, for any considerable length of time, is pay attention.

This raised some strategic questions. Does photorealistic VFX add value to single-view Instagram stories? Do people want to watch complex action sequences on a mobile? Does any of this work in 1:1 or 9:16? And most importantly, is this the right approach for our client?

With these questions in mind we began to craft a different strategic approach — one that sacrificed realism and intricacy in favour of energy and immediacy.

By making our films bright and modular with high-impact visuals we knew we could stand out on busy social networks, retain the attention of a fickle audience segment and scale our films across a variety of platforms.

So we worked with the client to develop some wild visual effects and deploy them in a way that would deliver maximum reach. We think the results speak for themselves.

You can view more of Oliver’s work via his Creator Profile and get in contact with our VFX team regarding any upcoming projects here.

Credits

Agency
Agency EA
Producer Anthony Doyle, Thomas Gent
Production
Production Company (Design) The Mill
Directors Oliver Davies, Stip
Service Provider Luttrell Productions
Editorial
Editors Matthew Newman, Theo Gibara
VFX Creative
VFX Creative The Mill
Creative Director Tom Dibb
Directors Oliver Davies, Stip
Online Artist David Wishart, James Pratt
Design Paul Bloomfield, Sam Singleton, Henry Foreman, Kenny Addeh, Matthew Campbell, Oliver Johnson, Enric Rodriguez, Roly Edwards, Florian Thamer, Katie McQuillan, Anthony Fieldsend, Rajinder Davsi, Kwok Fung Lam
Storyboard artist Sav Akyuz
Colour
Colour The Mill
Colourist Thomas Mangham
VFX Production
VFX Production The Mill
Producer Nicole Duncan
Assistant Producer James Yeo