Would you slip on a pair of Adidas trainers to take care of business in the city? Perhaps after reading this you will. Adidas is inadvertently nudging Chinese consumers to do so after users noticed a jacket description containing the phrase 在城里办事 (taking care of business in the city).
The original English copy simply read ‘running errands’, but what looks to be a machine-translation slip-up made the dull running of errands sounds far more important. Of course, this was a hit on Chinese social media.
Users posted jokes imagining Adidas wearers heading boldly from village to provincial capital on mysteriously important business. Others shared photos of themselves in adidas outfits while claiming to be handling major affairs. One popular meme caption read: ‘While you’re back in the village slandering me, I’m wearing Adidas, handling business in the city.’
Running through the joke was a self-deprecating nod to the kind of country folk who might wear Adidas to handle business: note the use of the provincial capital, rather than national. Other posts were written with characters that would nod to a rural accent.
Adidas embraced the joke. Its official RedNote account responded with the slogan ‘穿 adi 办 das’ (Wear adi, get das done). Das, pronounced in Chinese, is da shi 大事,or ‘big things’ – i.e. get big things done.
They recommended suitable products for people getting big stuff done in the city. Product descriptions came with tongue-in-cheek lines like ‘Get lots of things done in a day’ and ‘Works in the city, works even better outside it.’
In China, this kind of brand-to-consumer dialogue is becoming mainstream enough to have its own term: living-person vibe (活人感). It’s made possible by a very online population, and one with a good sense of humour.
Social media users increasingly reward brands that participate in internet culture rather than maintaining a carefully managed corporate distance. The takeaway point is that authenticity often matters more than perfection. If marketing’s job is to spark engagement, a well-handled mistake can sometimes achieve what a carefully planned campaign cannot.
