Adidas | Website & Retail
Shaping Sustainability Storytelling for a Global Brand
Through multi-market qualitative and in-store research, I uncovered gaps in how adidas communicated sustainability across digital and retail touchpoints. The insights drove changes to content strategy, product storytelling, and retail messaging globally.
The challenge
adidas had set ambitious sustainability goals, but consumer trust hadn’t caught up. Critical, sustainability-aware consumers struggled to navigate the brand’s messaging both online and in-store, risking disengagement and brand skepticism. Both online and in-store, users lacked clarity and trust in the brand’s messaging, which risked undermining engagement and long-term brand credibility. Internally, many teams were still unfamiliar with working closely with user research insights and unfiltered consumer perspectives.
My role
As Lead Strategic User Researcher, I was embedded across multiple teams, from Digital Experience and Global Brand Strategy to Retail Operations. I drove both qualitative and quantitative research initiatives to uncover user perceptions, surface communication gaps, and guide adidas in rethinking how it tells its sustainability story. I also played a key role in evangelizing research as a strategic function across departments unfamiliar with user-centered approaches.
My approach
To capture a global perspective, I conducted 18 hours of in-depth interviews with consumers across five countries, exploring sustainability habits, brand trust, and purchase drivers. I paired this with a quantitative in-store research project involving 600 intercept interviews in three cities, aimed at informing a global sustainability handbook for retail. Insights were translated into department-specific outcomes and presented across teams, often serving as a first exposure to user research for senior stakeholders. To ensure long-term traction, I also supported decision-making around content strategy, digital experience redesign, and in-store communication formats.
The impact
The research surfaced a clear gap: consumers wanted more transparency, clarity, and proof, not generic claims. This led directly to a redesign of the adidas.com sustainability hub and influenced adidas’ broader global sustainability brand strategy. The retail research shaped global operational guidance on what in-store sustainability messaging to scale or sunset. Store environments were adapted based on insights from the research, ensuring more visible and credible sustainability communication in retail settings. Beyond specific outcomes, the project significantly increased organizational awareness and adoption of user research as a tool for strategic alignment, including public endorsement from senior leadership.