Iris Wins Clio Sport Grand for Adidas No More Red Campaign

Creative network Iris, part of Cheil Worldwide, has won a Grand for Public Relations at the Clio Sport awards for its powerful and bold anti-knife crime work with Adidas. Kicking off a major multi-year partnership between Arsenal and Adidas, the London team dropped its iconic red strip for a crucial FA Cup match against Nottingham Forest instead stepping onto the pitch clad entirely in white, including the sponsor’s logo and players’ names.

The kit was launched by lifelong Arsenal fan actor Idris Elba and legendary former Arsenal player Ian Wright. The white kit, which controversially made Arsenal the same colour as their North London rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, was worn on national TV. The broadcast also included a ten minutes discussion pitch side about the campaign and the issue with both Idris and Ian.

The white kit was not for sale but instead awarded to young people in London as part of the No More Red Collective involving x10 local London charities, giving recipients access to paid projects, mentors and support from Adidas and Arsenal to help realise their ambitions. Iris also won a Bronze Award for Social Media for the campaign.

Iris picked up a second Bronze for Design in Product Innovation for its work with Adidas Originals and ESPN. It created a 'TV set' shoebox that transported sneaker influencer Jacques Slade back to 1979, forcing him to give his unboxing review of limited Adidas Originals from inside the 'state of the art' TV.

Cheil Benelux has also picked up five awards, winning two Silvers and two Bronzes for its latest evolution of Samsung’s on-going Olympic team sponsorship in the Netherlands. Cheil’s Fast Frame innovation precisely measures Olympic team BMX riders’ crank pressure to their coaches' Samsung devices, providing coaches with new data to unlock improved performance.  Using Fast Frame enabled BMX athlete Niek Kimman to achieve the perfect start to his race, winning the first Dutch Gold in the sport. Not surprisingly, Fast Frame has been hailed as the biggest BMX innovation ever. The agency won Silver for Product Innovation and its App, and Bronzes for Medium Innovation and Partnerships and Sponsorship.

The agency also won Silver for Artificial Intelligence for CarNext The Fangineer, an innovative platform that allowed fans to give racing advice to F1 driver Max Verstappen. The world’s first algorithm assistant, is built on the wisdom of the crowd and becomes smarter with each Grand Prix. It constantly weighed the contribution of individual fans - the Fangineers - meaning the better their advice, the more weight it was given next time. The platform attracted 93,606 unique Fangineers, and Max had his best season to date.

“Whether it’s No More Red for adidas, Fast Frame innovation for the Netherlands’ Olympic team or #TheFangineer for CarNext, as a Network, Cheil’s creative approach embeds our clients’ brands in contemporary culture through ideas that move. So, we’re excited to see this work celebrated at the highest level in sport and proud that our work makes a real difference to London’s knife crime crisis, to the Netherlands’ Olympic team performance and both CarNext and Max Verstappen’s season. Thanks also to Clio Sport for recognising that the world can never have too much sport!” Malcolm Poynton, global chief creative officer at Cheil Worldwide