Updated August 2026
A visual case study…
Adidas: 7 Workshops, 4 Continents
In late 2022, Adidas Global Procurement asked the Datalabs Agency to train about 150 people in data storytelling. The answer became seven live workshops across four continents in three weeks — an executive track and an analyst track, taught on Adidas’s own procurement scenarios, all delivered from Melbourne.
The program in one paragraph
What did the Datalabs Agency deliver for Adidas?
In 2022, the Datalabs Agency designed and facilitated a custom data storytelling curriculum for Adidas Global Procurement: seven three-hour workshops for cohorts in Shanghai, Herzogenaurach, Portland, and Lisbon — around 150 participants across an executive track and an analyst track — plus training materials and custom procurement datasets built from real Adidas business scenarios.
The Datalabs Agency is a Melbourne-based data visualization consultancy founded in 2012 that delivers corporate training workshops (Power BI, Tableau, data storytelling), dashboard design, and BI style guides for clients including Mercedes-Benz, Adidas, and UPS.
Watch the program come together
Four continents, seven workshops, two tracks
Every cohort on the left trained inside its own working day; every participant landed in one of two tracks on the right.
The problem behind the brief
Why did Adidas bring in a data storytelling trainer?
The animation above is the delivery map. The brief behind it: Adidas’s procurement teams had no shortage of analysis, and, like most analytical teams, the challenge was volume without a message — data-dump presentations that buried the point. Leadership wanted presentations that open with the number that matters and use data to support a recommendation.
That reframing — from data reporters to strategic advisors who use data to support a point of view — set the shape of the whole program. Executives and analysts were given separate tracks with the same methodology, so a VP and a junior buyer came away speaking the same language at the depth their role needs. And because generic training examples slide off a specialist audience, every exercise was built from procurement-specific scenarios and datasets, not stock charts.
Custom, not off the shelf
How was the program tailored to Adidas?
Everything was rebuilt around procurement: a custom curriculum, dummy datasets modelled on real Adidas supplier scenarios (invoices, discounts, factory locations, ratings), and exercises like the superlatives game shown below — run in three-hour interactive sessions sized for hands-on work.
Two tracks carried the same methodology at different depths: an executive session for VPs, Senior Directors, and Directors, and analyst sessions for junior and mid-level staff. It is the same tailoring approach behind all of our data visualisation training workshops — the content changes to fit the team, the method does not.
Three weeks, door to door
The seven Adidas workshops
The delivery schedule at a glance.
| Date | Cohort | Primary city |
|---|---|---|
| 29 Nov 2022 | APAC & Greater China analysts | Shanghai |
| 30 Nov 2022 | Executive leadership session | Herzogenaurach |
| 5 Dec 2022 | Americas analysts | Portland |
| 6 Dec 2022 | EMEA analysts | Herzogenaurach |
| 8 Dec 2022 | Executive leadership session | Herzogenaurach |
| 12 Dec 2022 | Portugal+ mixed group | Lisbon |
| 13 Dec 2022 | EMEA analysts | Herzogenaurach |
All seven sessions ran live from Melbourne in a three-hour interactive format, across start times spanning 2 AM to 12 PM Australian time.
The teaching assets, full size
Inside the workshop materials
Click any asset to view it full-screen — these are the actual workshop materials built for Adidas.
Suppliers become characters
The Superlatives Exercise
One supplier, three stories
The Superlative Venn
Real scenarios, dummy numbers
The Custom Dataset
The rules under every session
The principles behind the curriculum
Six principles shaped all seven sessions — and the training materials built on them stayed with Adidas.
Delivered, documented, taught
What did Adidas receive at the end?
Adidas received a custom data storytelling curriculum, seven delivered workshops, the training materials and custom datasets behind them, and around 150 staff — from VPs to junior buyers — trained in the same method.
The lasting deliverable is the reframing: procurement teams positioned as strategic advisors who use data to support a point of view, with a shared language for how data is communicated internally and upward. Training the executive layer alongside the analysts is what makes that language stick — both sides of the conversation learned it in the same three weeks.
Procurement teams should be strategic advisors who use data to support a point of view — not data reporters.
Otto Ottinger
The principle behind the Adidas curriculum
Questions & Answers
The Adidas program
Give every supplier a character
Why the superlatives exercise works
A procurement spreadsheet has no story in it — until you ask a yearbook question. Which supplier is most profitable? Which is least reliable? Who is the largest discounter, the closest in location, the worst rated? The moment a team answers, the rows stop being rows. They become characters.
That is the superlatives exercise, and it was the engine of the Adidas workshops. Each cohort worked through real procurement scenarios — supplier invoices, discounts, factory locations, quality ratings — and had to award the superlatives before drawing a single chart. Finding the message first is the whole discipline; the chart is just how you say it out loud.
The Venn version turns up the tension. When one supplier is simultaneously most profitable, smallest by volume, and best quality, that intersection is not a data point — it is an argument about where the next contract should go. A junior buyer who can spot that intersection and lead with it has stopped reporting and started advising.
I use the same device in our Introduction to Data Visualization workshop, on whatever data a team brings. The superlatives change; the effect — a room suddenly arguing about their own numbers — never does.
Seven sessions, one body clock…
Designing training for a global team
The Adidas brief had a constraint most training providers quietly fail: the audience lived in Shanghai, Herzogenaurach, Portland, and Lisbon, and the program had to land in three weeks. Flying a facilitator to four continents was never on the table. Delivering from Melbourne, live, was — if the schedule bent around the cohorts instead of the trainer.
So it bent. Sessions started anywhere from 2 AM to 12 PM my time, each placed inside the cohort’s own working morning or afternoon. A three-hour interactive format kept every session hands-on — long enough for exercises on real scenarios, short enough to hold a screen-bound room.
The other design decision was splitting the audience into an executive track and an analyst track. The methodology was identical; the altitude was not. Executives worked on what to demand from a data story; analysts worked on how to build one. Training both layers in the same fortnight is why the shared language held after the program ended.
Remote, time-zone-shaped delivery is now a standard option in our training workshops — and the format is priced on our workshop pricing page, where a remote full day can split across two mornings for exactly this reason.
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The Datalabs Agency
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