A viral meme about “going to town to handle business” helped Adidas pull off one of the most successful brand turnarounds in China—and highlights why Nike is struggling to keep up.

Just five years ago, Adidas was one of the most criticized foreign brands in China. Now, it seems to have become one of the most celebrated. Ironically, the brand’s biggest success in China yet started with a mistake it made last month.

In 2021, Adidas – along with Nike and other foreign brands – faced severe backlash and boycotts in China for participating in the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) move to stop sourcing cotton from the Xinjiang region, which Chinese consumers viewed as a hostile anti-Chinese political stance (and was framed that way by state media and official channels).

Chinese livestreamers for the brands were scolded online, Adidas employees were brought to tears, and stores across the country saw their sales drop. People began posting videos of themselves burning their Nike Air Jordans on Weibo. For the brands involved, it became a marketing nightmare.

Screenshot of SCMP report about the Nike sneakers being burnt, Adidas employees facing backlash back in 2021.

But now, Adidas has managed to completely turn its image around in mainland China, where it is being praised for its top-of-game PR skills.

Adidas: Heading to Town to Take Care of Business

Over the past few years, Adidas has increasingly embraced “New Chinese Style” (新中式), a design direction that blends Chinese aesthetics with contemporary fashion. The October 2025 launch of its “Chinese New Year Jacket”—combining tang suit-inspired elements with classic Adidas sportswear—became a huge hit, not just in China but globally.

The Adidas Chinese New Year collection became a huge hit in 2025. On the left: American influencer Hasan Piker wearing the jacket while visiting Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

But that was only the beginning of Adidas’s social media success in China.

In late May, some netizens spotted a machine-translated text on the Adidas website that immediately went viral for its unintentional humor.

A jacket promoted in English with the unremarkable phrase “pair it with jeans for errands around town“ appeared on the Chinese website as the clunky “pair it with jeans to handle business in the city“ (搭配牛仔裤，在城里办事 zài chénglǐ bàn shì).

The original English text and the clunky machine translation on the right.

More than a simple mistake, it was a cultural mistranslation. Running some errands is not the same as 办事 bàn shì in Chinese, which is more formal, bureaucratic language for handling affairs, such as going to the bank, notary, or police station—not a quick run to buy some eggs and milk.

For many Chinese netizens, the phrase evoked an image of an old villager cycling into the county town for official business, all while wearing an Adidas jacket.

Although the website was quickly adjusted, the meme was already snowballing and evolved into the more playful “off to town to take care of business” (进城办事 jìn chéng bàn shì).

One popular comment played on the rural-to-city associations of the phrase:

💬 “While you’re back in the village talking trash about me, I’m already wearing Adidas and heading into town to take care of business.”

Adidas responded with surprising speed and wit.

Instead of apologizing for the mistake, they posted a video showing their own “off to town to do business” T-shirt, which quickly became available for sale online and at flagship stores in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu.

Chinese actor and Adidas ambassador Li Xian (李现) was later spotted wearing a “handling business” T-shirt, and the comment sections exploded.

Adidas read the room and went on to launch a marketing campaign featuring China’s popular possum meme wearing one of its jackets alongside slogans such as “Wear Adidas, Handle Serious Affairs” and “Wear Adi, Handle Big Things“—a nod to the original mistranslation and a series of viral wordplays built around the brand’s Chinese name (including “穿Adi办大事” and “穿Adi, 办das”, with das meaning dàshì 大事, “important business” here).

They also put up signs labeling some of their stores as “Adidas Errands Office” (阿迪办事处).

Rather than distancing itself from the joke, Adidas amplified it, becoming even funnier than the netizens themselves.

Other brands in China, from Lays to Alipay, saw the hype surrounding the meme and also started incorporating the “handle business” phrase into their online campaigns, referencing Adidas.

Various Chinese brands incorporated the Adidas meme into their own campaigns.

Because Adidas’s response felt effortless, authentic, and on-brand, it greatly boosted the brand’s popularity and appeal among young Chinese consumers.

Nike’s Grass is No Longer Greener

Sportswear giant Nike also became a major trending topic in China over the past week, but for entirely different reasons. Nike hasn’t been doing all that well recently, and the brand’s decline went viral in the same week that Adidas’s success was evident.

Nike became a top trending topic under the hashtag “Chinese consumers are abandoning Nike faster than anyone expected” (中国消费者抛弃耐克比想象中更快) after reports that a pair of sneakers originally sold for 899 yuan (US$132) are now selling for 429 yuan ($63) and still failing to attract buyers.

Nike’s decline is noteworthy because the brand was once booming in China. As with many other Western brands, it symbolized quality, prestige, and a cosmopolitan future for much of the 1990s and 2000s.

In a 2011 study of Chinese consumer aspirations, one respondent imagined a future in which she would drive a Mercedes-Benz, wear Nike, and eat KFC—a vision of modernity built around foreign brands. Another person dreamt of wearing “Nike clothes and Nike shoes (…) on the green grass, swinging golf clubs under the golden sunshine.”[1]

But Nike’s grass is no longer greener. Chinese commenters largely agree that much of the trust and desire surrounding the brand has eroded.

Many former Nike consumers now prefer Chinese brands such as Anta, Li-Ning or ERKE. Multiple posts on Chinese social media cite the Xinjiang cotton controversy as a turning point from which Nike never fully recovered.

The Localization Dilemma: A Strategic Catch-22?

The contrasting fortunes of Nike and Adidas reveal something important about the position of foreign brands in China today.

As domestic brands improved and narratives of national rejuvenation and the “Chinese Dream” gained prominence under Xi Jinping, consumer sentiment toward Western brands shifted dramatically, especially amid a growing number of controversies involving them.

From a Dolce & Gabbana campaign deemed racist to a witch hunt for Western brands listing Hong Kong and Taiwan as separate countries, international brands increasingly started struggling to find their place between politics, patriotism, and consumers who are choosing “Made in China” over global consumer culture.

As Zhihong Gao[2] observed as early as 2012, the rise of cultural confidence and renewed appreciation for Chinese traditions created a dilemma for foreign brands.

They find themselves caught in a strategic catch-22: if they localize too much, they risk losing the distinctiveness that made their brands attractive in the first place, while also reinforcing consumer preference for local cultural elements; yet if they remain too foreign, they risk appearing culturally tone-deaf and disconnected from Chinese consumers.

This is where Adidas appears to have found a sweet spot.

Unlike Nike, which seems to be living off its past success while showing little urgency in adapting to the Chinese market, Adidas has fully embraced Chinese digital culture, local humor, wordplay, and youth trends without abandoning its own identity.

Rather than pretending to be Chinese, Adidas is participating in Chinese culture as a distinctly foreign brand. By celebrating the unique elements of Chinese culture, both in tradition and modernity, it is boosting both its own image and the cultural pride it is tapping into. That is Chinamaxxing in a nutshell.

• Read more about Chinamaxxing here.
• Read more about the rise of ‘proudly made in China’ here.
• Read more about Nike vs ERKE here. 

[1] Kelly Tian and Lily Dong, Consumer-Citizens of China: The Role of Foreign Brands in the Imagined Future China (London: Routledge, 2011), 70–71.

[2] Zhihong Gao, “Chinese Grassroots Nationalism and Its Impact on Foreign Brands,” Journal of Macromarketing 32, no. 2 (2012): 184–185.

By Manya Koetse
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