The adidas Global Cultural Guidance Playbook was born out of a larger effort to create a review system solely for evaluating work through the lens of cultural intelligence.

I served as a member of a cross-functional team representing many different disciplines, locations, and identities. We met twice a week, every week, to review voluntarily submitted WIP adidas projects of every kind.

We built a global network of employees and consultants who could speak to a variety of cultural contexts, and provided assessments and recommendations in response to each submission.

We evaluated everything from product designs and graphics, to campaign messaging, brand partnerships, casting and styling, and so much more.

The team published an annual playbook built from case studies of submissions and examples of best practices. As the editor of this annual Cultural Guidance Playbook, I articulated the takeaways and synthesized them into tangible direction and creative strategy.

The wording of this work was extremely important. I needed to set and maintain a tone that reflected the constructive, collaborative spirit of the program. I also needed to capture the nuance and salience of many complicated and often difficult conversations. Plus, many of the projects we influenced were extremely high profile and needed to be addressed with political sensitivity.

See more of the Cultural Guidance Playbook