Adidas CEO Says Bella Hadid Is 'Still a Friend of the Brand'

Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden, speaking on a conference call with media on Wednesday, addressed the brand’s “mistake” in casting model Bella Hadid in a controversial ad campaign.

Adidas featured Hadid in a July campaign promoting the reissue of the Adidas SL72, a sneaker originally launched around the 1972 Olympics in Munich, where Palestinian militants killed 11 Israeli participants. Israel’s official X account called out Adidas on July 18, questioning the brand for using Hadid, who is of Palestinian descent and a vocal supporter of pro-Palestine causes, to sell a shoe related to the Munich Olympics.

Photos from the campaign show her, along with soccer player Jules Koundé and ASAP Nast, holding flowers in an apparent reference to the bouquets traditionally given to Olympic medal winners. The images of Hadid in the SL72 do not make any allusion to the Munich Olympics, and the shoe’s Olympic history is usually not a part of Adidas’ marketing materials.

When criticism mounted online, Adidas issued an apology, saying in a statement that any connection between the SL72 campaign with Hadid and “tragic historical events” were “completely unintentional.” The brand announced in the same statement that it would be revising the campaign.

But Gulden, responding to questions from the media on Adidas’ Q2 2024 earnings call, confirmed the brand has an ongoing relationship with Hadid.

“She's still a friend of the brand,” Gulden said, “and yes, we pay her according to her contract.”

After Adidas apologized and pulled the campaign, reports emerged in publications like Us Weekly and TMZ that Hadid was considering legal action against the German brand. Gulden claimed on the earnings call that he had no knowledge of a potential lawsuit from the model.

“We have not heard anything that she's going to sue us,” Gulden said. “So I don't know where that rumor started.”

Hadid was quiet on the issue until Monday, when she posted a long statement to Instagram addressing her appearance in the Adidas ad.

“For those of you that do not know my heart, I want to make sure you're hearing directly from me about my recent campaign with Adidas,” Hadid wrote. “I would never knowingly engage with any art or work that is linked to a horrific tragedy of any kind.”

The model said she would not have participated in the campaign had she been aware of the connection to the massacre at the 1972 Olympics. Hadid said she believes that event is not representative of Palestinian people.

“I will forever stand by my people of Palestine while continuing to advocate for a world free of antisemitism,” Hadid wrote in her statement. “Antisemitism has no place in the liberation of the Palestinian people.”

Gulden did not seem keen on the repeated questions about the controversy stemming from the SL72 campaign with Hadid, and was eager to move past the issue on Wednesday’s call.

“We did a mistake in the way that bits and pieces in this campaign were put together, and when you do a mistake, you apologize and you move on. And that's what we did,” Gulden said. “There's nothing more to add to that.”