Adidas Brand Activation Workshop: "Pimp Your Sportshirt"

Last Saturday, I was invited by Adidas to host a workshop at their Adidas Flagship Store in Berlin. They have a space called “Green Lab” in the second floor, where they offer different services, like sneaker cleaning, customisations with patches and vinyls, and host themed upcycling workshops for their community.

This was a true milestone for me—not just professionally, but personally. As a non-German-speaking immigrant running a small creative business in Berlin, it means so much that a global brand, not only reached out to me, but also gave me complete creative freedom to design the experience.

 

The Concept: Pimp Your Football Shirt

With the football world cup approaching, Adidas wanted to create an interactive experience around football jerseys with the goal to:

→ Spread the knowledge on how to customise clothes

→ Engage the public in a hands-on activation

→ Give their dead stock football T-shirts a new purpose

I suggested using techniques that wouldn’t involve sewing machines:

• Iron-on double-sided tape for hemming and patching

• Reflective iron-on tape

• Textile painting and drawing

• Metal details like eyelets, rivets, chains

With 15 participants and one instructor, I had to come up with a smart, scalable, and beginner friendly concept. It was a lot of work to put together, but once it was brainstormed a new workshop type was born.

Testing The Techniques

Since this was the first time I was running a workshop without sewing machines, I had to make some samples and experiment what was possible. Adidas gave me a few jerseys to play with, so I came up with some samples using these customisation techniques, to use as reference for participants.

Now this is exactly where I THRIVE — getting creative within limitations. I had so much fun making these samples and exploring how much you can do with just a few tools and a bit of imagination. I'll be writing on a different post about these designs cause there's a lot to learn from them.

To bring the pieces to life, I invited my friends @louisa.fiebeler and @karmadisapio to model them for the workshop promo, beautifully captured by Francisco Ramos.

Workshop Day

15 people signed up through the Adidas app — it was full in 10 minutes. I couldn’t believe my name was actually in the app… of course I took a screenshot 🙃

The vibe was super nice from the start. I began with a quick demo on how to use the tools and techniques, and showed them the sample pieces I had made, plus some other clothes I’d customised using the same methods — just to spark ideas and trigger that creativity. Then I was consulting the whole time giving them ideas and suggestions for their designs.

Click to see video recap

I loved how each one of them created something different, fitting to their own personal style. Everyone was working on their projects, but also learning from what was happening around them.

Brand Activation Workshop

By inventing this workshop, I unlocked a new offer for brands, companies, events, or any large group. It’s simple, hands-on, creative, and truly impactful — a perfect way to turn unused merch, dead stock, clothes, or accessories into something cool and unique.

If you’re looking for a real and original way to bring your sustainability values to life, use my brand activation workshop idea, get a quote in my events page.

With love,

Josefina