Two days before the climax of this year’s World Cup, kitmaker Adidas ran a hastily constructed ad campaign highlighting talisman players Lamine Yamal and Lionel Messi in front of its famous triple stripe logo. The message of the ad was simple enough: the protagonists of the summer’s biggest sporting event were both Adidas men. The big-ticket ambassador deals deployed by Adidas and its rivals Nike and Puma belong to a strategy manual written by marketers in the 1980s , one that’s been largely superseded by the creator playbook adopted by athletes and brands alike. Years into that transition, some players are beginning to push back against…
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