There’s a new adidas film out for the 2026 World Cup called Backyard Legends. And honestly, it does not feel like an ad. It feels like the start of something. That is what makes it so good.
Click to watch
The reaction online tells you everything.
People are not responding to it like a commercial. They are responding to it like they just got the pilot episode to a series they want to keep watching. That is rare.
Because most brand content gets a polite nod at best.
This one is pulling people in. And adidas did it at exactly the right time.
The World Cup is not just another sporting event. FIFA calls it the biggest single-sport event on the planet, and around 5 billion people engaged with the 2022 tournament across platforms.
The 2026 World Cup is coming to the United States, Mexico, and Canada, which means this tournament is going to live at the center of culture here in North America in a way most brands will never get another shot at.
So adidas did not make a product ad. They made a story worthy of the moment. That is the lesson.
If you are a B2B company in 2026, this is the assignment.
Not “how do we say more?” How do we MAKE people want more?
That is a very different question.
What adidas understands in this film is that story starts with tension, not explanation.
Timothée Chalamet does not show up and start selling anything. He starts telling a legend.
He talks the way people actually tell stories when they are trying to pull their friends in. A little uncertain. A little dramatic. A little folklore mixed with facts. “They haven’t lost since 1996.” Then, “Maybe 95. People argue about it. I don’t argue. I say 96.”
That is such a smart choice. Because that is how real stories sound.
Not polished to death. Not over-scripted. Not corporate.
Human.
Then he lands the line that changes the whole thing: “It’s not a winning streak. It’s a legend.”
That is when the ad stops being a setup and becomes a world. Now you are not watching a brand try to get your attention. You are inside a myth.
That is what strong storytelling does. It creates a world people want to step into. And adidas keeps building it.
3 kids on concrete between apartment buildings.
A crew nobody can beat.
Old legends like Beckham, Zidane, and Del Piero already tried and failed.
New stars get pulled in.
Messi is lurking around the edges.
Bad Bunny is there.
The soundtrack, the street energy, the retro styling, the references to 90s and early 2000s football culture, all of it makes the story feel bigger than the 5 minutes it takes to watch.
That is why people want more of it. Not because of celebrity alone. Because adidas gave those celebrities a world to enter.
That distinction is more than people realize.
A lot of B2B companies think storytelling means adding a better headline, a founder anecdote, or a customer quote into a deck.
That is not storytelling.
Storytelling is when your audience can feel the stakes.
Storytelling is when they know who the hero is.
Storytelling is when they understand the tension before you ever show them the solution.
Storytelling is when the message feels like it belongs to them, not just to you.
That is exactly what happens in Backyard Legends.
The stars are famous, but they are not the emotional center of the story. The local kids are.
That is another lesson B2B companies should steal immediately.
Your brand should not always be the hero. Your buyer should be.
Too many companies still write and market like they are the main character. They lead with themselves. Their process. Their features. Their company update. Their methodology. Their new service line.
But buyers do not care about stepping into your story. They care about seeing themselves inside one.
That means your job is not to perform expertise. Your job is to create relevance.
To show them the world they are already living in. To name the tension they are already feeling. To give language to the stakes they have not fully articulated yet.
And then to show them a way through.
That is why this adidas film works so well for business people to study.
It proves that the best storytelling is not fluff.
It is structure.
It is clarity.
It is timing.
It is emotional precision.
And it is restraint.
adidas does not rush. They let curiosity do some of the work. They trust the audience enough to stay with the story. They build intrigue before payoff.
That is a big lesson for B2B.
You do not need to front-load everything. You do not need to dump every credential into the first paragraph of a homepage. You do not need to say every smart thing in the first 30 seconds of a video.
Sometimes the better move is to create enough tension that the buyer leans in on their own.
That is what makes someone keep reading.
That is what makes someone watch to the end.
That is what makes someone remember you later.
That is what makes someone want the next conversation.
And that is really the point.
The brands winning right now are not just informing the market. They are enrolling the market. They are creating stories people want to follow, not just messages people are forced to sit through.
That is how you talk to your audience in 2026.
Not with more noise. Not with more polish. Not with more generic “thought leadership.”
With story. With tension. With specificity. With a world your audience recognizes and wants to be part of.
That is what adidas nailed here.
And if more B2B companies understood that, their marketing would stop sounding like content and start sounding like something people actually want to come back to.
That is the bar now.
See you next week.
Javy
P.S. — Couple things I’d like to share this week.
Recent Guest Appearance: From Chaos to Clarity
I recently shared some thoughts on From Chaos to Clarity Podcast why paid media without a real list, clean targeting, and the right foundations behind it turns into expensive noise fast.
If you are spending money before fixing the underlying system, this one will hit home.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcast.
Playbook: Quarterly Pipeline Planning
If your quarter starts with a bunch of activity but no real planning framework behind it, this is worth your time.
It is built to help teams think more clearly about what pipeline they actually need, where it should come from, and how to avoid drifting through the quarter.
