The product idea was difficult to argue with.
Adidas has a Single Shoe service that allows amputees to buy one shoe instead of paying for a pair they cannot fully use. It is practical, inclusive and built around a real customer need.
Then the campaign around it became something else.
A local Israeli activation featured Shalev Biton, a former Israeli soldier who lost a leg during the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict. The video focused on him trying a single sneaker and running. But once it travelled beyond its original audience, viewers brought a much larger political context with them. Pro-Palestinian activists called for a boycott, pointing to the large number of amputees in Gaza. Adidas subsequently apologised, saying the activation had caused concern and strong reactions.
This is not really a story about whether the Single Shoe service is good. It is about a problem every global brand now faces: context collapse.
Your Audience Is No Longer the Audience You Planned For
Advertising briefs still speak confidently about target audiences. Women 25 to 34. Urban professionals. Football fans. Premium consumers.
The internet does not care.
A local campaign can be screenshot, translated and pushed into a completely different political, cultural or historical conversation within hours. The audience that eventually judges the work may never have appeared in the media plan.
That is what makes modern brand symbolism difficult. Meaning is no longer controlled by the creative team.
Casting Is Strategy, Not Decoration
Brands often treat casting as execution. Find someone inspiring. Find someone authentic. Find someone whose story demonstrates the product benefit.
But people arrive with histories.
In this case, the very reason the subject was an amputee was directly relevant to the product. His military background and the geopolitical context surrounding how he lost his leg created a second meaning that the campaign could not contain.
The question for marketers is not whether brands should avoid complicated people. That would produce cowardly advertising. The question is whether the team has mapped the meanings attached to the person before turning them into a symbol.
A Campaign Can Be Locally Logical and Globally Explosive
Global companies operate in multiple moral and cultural environments at once. A casting choice that feels ordinary in one market can become incendiary in another.
That does not mean global brands should try to offend nobody. That is impossible. It means local relevance needs global awareness.
Adidas has experienced this before. In 2024, a campaign involving Bella Hadid and a retro shoe linked to the 1972 Munich Olympics generated criticism from multiple sides before the company changed direction.
Repeated incidents should tell marketers something: heritage, politics and identity do not stay politely outside the campaign room.
The Apology Cannot Fix the Original Symbol
Once a campaign acquires a political meaning, the brand enters a difficult communications position. Explain too much and you amplify the controversy. Say too little and the apology sounds evasive. Remove the work and one side says you surrendered. Leave it up and another says you endorse the symbolism.
This is why the best crisis strategy often happens before publication.
SoroSoke has written before about how brands make criticism worse when they respond defensively. But there is an earlier lesson here: scenario planning should happen at casting and concept stage, not only after the backlash begins.
The Campaign Was About Accessibility. The Internet Made It About Power.
That is the brutal thing about symbols.
A brand can intend one meaning and distribute another.
The Single Shoe service communicates inclusion at product level. But the casting decision placed that message inside a conflict where disability itself has become politically charged. The product did not change. The meaning around the product did.
Great marketing often borrows meaning from culture. The risk is that culture can borrow the campaign back.
TL;DR
Adidas’ Single Shoe service solves a genuine accessibility problem. But a local campaign featuring former Israeli soldier Shalev Biton triggered boycott calls and an apology from Adidas after the work collided with the wider symbolism of the Gaza war.
The lesson is not “avoid controversy.” It is more useful than that.
Casting is meaning. Context travels. And a good product campaign can still become a bad symbol when the brand fails to anticipate what the audience will bring into the frame.
SoroSoke.
Related SoroSoke reading: when social context changes creative meaning.