Adidas hands India's athletes a billion voices

Adidas launched its India campaign, "You Got This," on the eve of the Asian Games and Asian Para Games, and the film's central asset is not a shoe. It is a voice.

The work follows boxer Lovlina Borgohain, para javelin thrower Sumit Antil, sprinter Simran Sharma, and Kartik Karkera as they prepare for their disciplines, then layers in messages of encouragement in Haryanvi, Hindi, Assamese, and Marathi. The organizing idea is that an athlete walking into a continental final is carrying the belief of a billion people, and that the belief sounds like home rather than like a stadium.

Choosing regional languages over a single national script is the campaign's real decision. Indian sports marketing defaults to cricket and to Hindi, and both choices flatten the country into one audience. Sending each athlete their own dialect makes the support specific, which is the difference between a sponsorship and a relationship.

"Every athlete's journey is shaped by the people who believe in them, especially in the moments when the pressure is at its highest," said Bhawna Sikka, senior director of brand at Adidas India.

The timing is deliberate. India finished fourth at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow with 39 medals, including 13 gold, and the brand's roster for the Asian Games in Japan also includes Niharika Vashisht, Preeti Pal, Damneet Singh, Sarvesh Kushare, Tejaswin Shankar, and Nishad Kumar. A campaign released as the flame lights has a two-week window in which the results write the second half of the story.

Running para athletes inside the main film rather than in a separate, softer execution is the other quiet move here. The category has spent years treating para sport as a corporate social responsibility line item. Adidas is treating it as sport, which is both more honest and more useful to the athletes on the roster.

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →