Iron partnered with adidas to concept an immersive digital World Cup experience for Dick’s Sporting Goods, then executed a phased campaign across DSG, Amazon, and Academy Sports + Outdoors.
The FIFA World Cup 2026 arrives once every four years. For a brand like adidas, whose identity is inseparable from the sport, it’s the single biggest moment on the marketing calendar.
Iron partnered with adidas marketing teams to shape their World Cup digital strategy across key wholesale retail partners, contributing both high-level conceptual work for Dick’s Sporting Goods and hands-on retail marketing support across DSG, Amazon, and Academy Sports + Outdoors.
adidas came to Iron at the earliest stage of campaign development — before final assets existed, before direction was locked, before the full scope of the World Cup campaign had taken shape.
The ask wasn’t execution, but vision: define what an immersive, long-term digital retail experience could look like for wholesale, specifically within Dick’s Sporting Goods’ digital environment. The constraint of having no finalized assets was, in practice, a signal to think bigger. adidas gave Iron full latitude.
IRON’s creative approach began by studying what already existed in the physical retail space. DSG’s House of Sport locations feature floor-to-ceiling digital screens, animated fixtures, and merchandise environments designed to command attention.
IRON proposed translating that spatial experience into an immersive digital commerce environment.
The concept: a scrollable, interactive experience on dsg.com that mirrored the House of Sport layout. Users would move through virtual aisles, click products to expand details, and add items to cart — a digital shopping experience built around world-class brand storytelling rather than a standard product grid. At the center: a 3D rendering of the adidas OMB Trionda ball, spinning as a hero moment, with mini balls animating outward on interaction.
The work accounted for practical reality from the start. Iron mapped the full UX/UI framework including mobile behavior, traffic roadmap via social ads and email campaigns, navigation placement within dsg.com after any paid homepage placement expired. Three concepts were developed, each praised by the adidas team for how precisely they married wholesale retail requirements with core adidas brand identity.
From that conceptual foundation, Iron moved into phased execution across three major adidas World Cup product drops, maintaining a consistent retail marketing framework across DSG, Amazon, and Academy Sports + Outdoors.
Iron launched the campaign’s hero product with enhanced PDP content built around a ball guide feature, paid media across all three wholesale retail partners, an animated GIF for the DSG homepage, and in-store video content for DSG locations.
Iron supported the Home Jersey drop with PDPs amplifying national team narratives, paid media across Amazon and Academy, and site assets including static and animated creative for DSG, Amazon, and Academy Sports + Outdoors.
Iron drove consideration for adidas’s flagship soccer cleat drop through comparative performance storytelling — PDPs built around side-by-side product narratives, Academy paid media, and a dedicated Amazon Brand Store landing page.
This project demonstrates two things in combination that are difficult to find in a single digital marketing partner: the ability to operate at the level of brand vision and digital experience design, and the operational capability to execute that vision across a complex, multi-retailer wholesale digital ecosystem.
Iron understands adidas, as well as how adidas products have to live within the specific demands of wholesale retail. The conceptual work on the House of Sport digital experience wasn’t a pitch exercise. It was proof of how Iron thinks when given the latitude to.
The best wholesale retail work doesn't start at the asset level — it starts with a genuine understanding of how a brand operates inside a retail partner's ecosystem, and what it takes to make that experience exceptional. That conviction is what made the House of Sport digital concept possible. And it's what drove consistent, on-brand execution across three product drops, three retail partners, and every format in between.
The adidas World Cup brief demanded two things that don't always coexist: the conceptual range to envision a brand-defining digital experience, and the operational discipline to execute a multi-phase, multi-retailer campaign without losing consistency across a single asset. That combination of brand-level conceptual thinking paired with wholesale retail execution is what Iron brings to partners like Adidas. The result wasn't just a campaign. It was a demonstration of what's possible when you understand the brand, the retailer, and the space where the two meet.
Retail Campaign Development Enterprise retail companies need campaigns that work across dozens of channels, formats, and retail partners simultaneously. We develop integrated retail campaigns that give brands the creative assets they need to connect with their audience, from initial concept through final asset delivery across every touchpoint. Retail Creative Operations High-volume retail creative requires a production model built for scale. We help companies manage retail creative operations, delivering consistent, on-brand assets across every customer experience touchpoint. Our model is designed for brands that need to engage a large audience without sacrificing speed or quality.
wholesale digital retail experience is a brand-driven shopping environment built within a third-party retailer's website — like Dick's Sporting Goods or Amazon — that goes beyond a standard product grid to tell a cohesive brand story. For sports brands like adidas, it matters because major retail partners are where most consumers actually purchase, making the digital shelf as important as the physical one.
adidas OMB Trionda is the official match ball for the FIFA World Cup 2026. For its retail launch, Iron Creative developed enhanced PDP content built around a ball guide feature, paid media across all three wholesale partners, an animated GIF for the DSG homepage, and in-store video content for DSG locations — positioning it as the hero product of the entire campaign.
A digital agency with wholesale retail expertise — like Iron Creative — can improve a brand's presence by developing enhanced product detail pages, building retail-specific paid media strategies, creating platform-native creative assets, and designing immersive brand experiences within a retailer's digital environment. The goal is to make the product page function as a brand moment, not just a transaction.
Creative combines brand-level conceptual thinking with the operational capability to execute across complex, multi-retailer wholesale ecosystems. Unlike agencies that start at the asset level, Iron begins with a deep understanding of how a brand lives inside a retail partner's environment — then builds the strategy, UX, creative, and media plans to make that experience exceptional, as demonstrated by their FIFA World Cup 2026 work with adidas.
Iron Creative specializes in retail campaign development and retail creative operations for enterprise brands. Their model covers the full spectrum from initial brand concepting and UX/UI strategy to high-volume asset production across every channel, format, and retail partner — designed for brands that need scale without sacrificing creative quality or consistency.
Iron works with some of the world’s leading retail brands. Whether you’re building your wholesale presence, launching a multi-retailer campaign, or concepting brand experiences that go beyond the product page, we’re confident we can help. Drop us a line.