Nic Galway

101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior

Nic Galway, Senior Vice President Originals Design.

Beginning his career in industrial and automotive design before joining Adidas in 1999, Nic Galway’s 17-year tenure with the brand has spanned numerous creative roles across performance and style. His multi-disciplinary approach to design has been evident in the formation of high-profile product offerings such as the Pure BOOST and the Y-3 Qasa, and has been crucial to many of Adidas’ high-profile collaborations including Adidas by Stella McCartney, the foundation of Y-3 with Yohji Yamamoto and most recently Adidas’ partnership with Kanye West.

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“We should see ourselves as a work in progress, because we are a living brand.”

— NIC GALWAY, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT ORIGINALS DESIGN

Reese: I heard that at Adidas, you believe in collaboration. How does collaboration influence design?

Galway: I think there are two ways of creating. You can consider how things have looked in the past and draw conclusions from that. Or you can think: What went on in these people’s heads, and what do they stand for? What I’ve always done is to try and understand what Adi Dassler must have thought, rather than what he made, because he made what he could in the era he lived in. If he lived today, I don’t think the products he created would look the same – but they would have the same integrity. I’m interested in understanding Adi Dassler’s integrity, and when I collaborate with creative minds like Kanye or Pharrell Williams, it’s similar. I like to draw from experiences with people. And I like to be challenged by others. I want to understand how they view the world, and how that differs from how I view it. To me, that’s what collaboration is about, and it’s what working at Adidas is about. Adi was a creator. He was someone who, at the spur of a moment, would make something without a lot of planning. That’s the legacy of the brand: Not what the shoe looks like, but rather the confidence behind it, and an attitude of being prepared to make a difference. Whether it’s Tubular, or Yeezy, or other products my team have worked on with me, I try to take that integrity into everything, rather than a specific aesthetic.

Reese: How do decision-making processes in a collaborative environment like that work? After all, at the end of the day, a decision has to be made about which product goes out there.

Galway: Collaboration doesn’t mean democracy. I actually believe the best thing that can come out of collaboration is tension – creative tension, not personal tension. If you put two people together that you’d normally think wouldn’t match that well, and you can get them to work, then the result can be something really unique. It requires a certain level of tension, and it requires people who are happy to work in that environment. Without that tension, it would all just be happy and nice, but that’s not what we’re after. We want to challenge conventions. A true collaboration is something you do together, which you couldn’t do on your own. So the answer is: I think I know when it’s right, when you get that tension and it takes you to new ground. And collaborations are built on trust. Adidas has a long track record of proving its trust. I first met the designer Yohji Yamamoto in 1999, and I still collaborate with him today. People can see that consistency. And they can see that we never take the easy path.

“The second the collaboration turns into an endorsement – paying someone just to put their name on their product – consumers can see straight through it.”

Reese: Your brand’s visual DNA is reflected in the three stripes. The three stripes probably have a very high recognition value around the world.

Galway: The three stripes are a part of us, but I believe Adidas is more about confidence. The brand is built on it. Look at our 60 years of archive… our brand has always been at the cutting edge. Culture has always adopted us because of that. That’s the legacy I want to continue. Every generation wants to own something. But they want to own the best. And we have to be the best for them. That’s my Adidas.

Reese: If we transferred that to the audio sphere, how would Adidas sound? Is there a sonic DNA to Adidas? After all, a lot of your brand history is music-driven – all the way from Run DMC to Pharrell today.

Galway: Absolutely.

Reese: Music is at the core of the brand. Kanye and Pharrell might not score your commercials, but music is part of your brand culture. That, to me, is intriguing.

Galway: As a brand, we interact with culture. We did a show with Kanye at Madison Square Garden this year – a fashion show featuring Kanye’s music, it was a huge event. Adidas was at the heart of it. I think that works, because culturally, it feels natural to us. We started with Run DMC, in Madison Square Garden, for a sports event – there’s lots of links there. But what I like about that the most is that it’s always a work in progress. And I think we should be seeing it as a work in progress, because we are a living brand. What we sounded like in the 80s shouldn’t be what we sound like today. It needs to evolve. The Kanye I met two years ago doesn’t sound now as he did back then. That constant evolution, constantly wanting to be a part of the dialogue of culture, is what we’re all about… Whether it’s a product, or a sound, it’s about that evolution.

Reese: You’re right. An audio brand has to evolve as well. It has a unique character, but it doesn’t stay the same.

Galway: It will signify the success of brands in the future. Like I said, every generation wants ownership of something. So if you’re very strict in your identity – this is what we look like, this is what we sound like – you’ll be outdated very soon. Adidas, conversely, stands for pioneering: We’re confident. We’re making a difference, but not on our own, but together with people. It’s a very new way of thinking. You see that in the Googles of the world, in other modern brands. You don’t see it so much with more traditional, product-based brands. And, again, I think what links of all of it together is the idea of collaboration and openness and learning, and always being curious. You know, before I met Kanye I classed him as a musician. Now that I’ve known him for some time, I class him as a creative – a cultural creative. He’s inspired by so many things. And I learn a lot from that. If you want to design a product and you only surround yourself with product people, you’re limited. And if you just make music and surround yourself with music people, it’s the same thing. The second you open yourself to many mindsets, you start to break with conventions, and as a head of design, that’s what I have to do.

Reese: There probably is a visual brand book for Adidas though, right? And it probably has the three stripes in it.

Galway: Of course.

Reese: So that’s not open for discussion. Is that right?

Galway: I wouldn’t say that. It’s more about understanding why it’s important. If you were born in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the three stripes stood for a uniform of sport. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, the three stripes started to represent a mix of music, culture, and sport. Today, you could add multiple layers to that again. So what started at one very sharp point has become very meaningful to a lot of people. To me, the three stripes are a uniform of youth. It’s a very powerful thing.

“What keeps the three stripes alive is the confidence and the connection with culture. It’s like any logo or brand mark: it’s only as strong as the confidence of the brand that owns it. And my job is to look at it about connecting memories of the past with the future.”

Same as with music: Something is somehow familiar, but given a new context – that’s often what resonates with people, and it counts for campaigns, a new product, or stores, etc. Memories of our past inform our future. We can’t just stay in the past. You gotta take it forward.

Reese: So what’s Adidas’ voice? You include music in your creations, right?

Galway: Well, to me, it’s all linked. I would say that my job is culture, and that includes music. I didn’t train to design shoes, and my competition isn’t just sneaker brands. My competition is anything cultural at the end of the day. As is the consumer with whom I want to connect. A very polished and defined identity is not that inviting for a youth that has all those options we didn’t have when we were young. Of course, there is a clear strategy behind what we do, but I believe it has to be dynamic, collaborative, and a work in progress. Right now, I have lines out the door for our NMD sneakers. So the temptation would be to protect it. But the reason there is such a high demand for that sneaker is because we showed confidence and created something people hadn’t seen before. And the successor to that would have to be something else they haven’t seen before. That’s what I mean by constant evolution. Whether it’s music or design, people who reinvent themselves, yet stay true to themselves, have longevity.

Reese: So that’s the essence of your brand culture?

Galway: Adidas is a melting pot. Youth culture is allowing differences – and it’s celebrating these differences. I love the fact that what links, say, Pharrell, and Raf Simons, and Kanye, is that they’re all great creative minds of their generations, but they’re also completely different people, and there’s a place for all of them in our world. And I want to celebrate that. I don’t want to bring in someone and then turn them into someone they’re not. I think that’s what’s so great about Adidas – we are a people’s brand and that, yeah, we want to show a different path. Adi Dassler started it, and that’s what we take over today, but for a completely different generation.

Reese: From an audio branding point of view, at Adidas, you have an immediate connection with your consumers inside your flagship stores. I think it would be great to have Kanye or Pharrell curate playlists for those stores – together with your audience, in a collaborative open-source concept. It would create a great PR story.

Galway: Yes, I think these kinds of ideas are worth looking into.

“Cultural interaction is at every touchpoint, and I would like to see a future where we bring together sound, visuals, the product… all of these elements.”

Reese: If I look at the shoe you’re wearing now, that’s a Tubular, right? How would that translate into a car design I wonder? And how would it sound?

Galway: You know, these are the right kind of conversations. I just kicked off a project in the room opposite from here, and I told them: I don’t want to see any references from our industry in your kick-off research. Of course, you need to know what your competitor is up to. But there’s no inspiration for you in that. The inspiration comes from other places. When we were working on the first Tubular, I spent a day at a hardware store, looking at hoses and pipes and stuff like that. I wasn’t looking at sneakers. I was looking at items I found intriguing. And what could I do with those objects to turn them into something else? The very first prototype was actually made of hosepipes, cut and glued on. It looked really cool. You won’t find that inspiration looking at a competitor’s offering.

Note: The interview took place in Herzogenaurach on June 6, 2016.

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