Within days of going online, a Facebook campaign had racked up 25,000 users protesting at Adidas painting over graffiti along a kilometer and a half wall in Warsaw.

The graffiti along the wall which surrounds a horse racing track in the south of Warsaw dates back to 1993 – one of the first major examples of hip hop inspired street art in the capital following the collapse of communism.

In March, however, a section of the wall had been covered over in black paint, part of a planned guerilla advertising campaign by sportswear manufacturers Adidas.

DJ Lukasz Stasiak and a few friends immediately launched the Adisucks Facebook page in protest.

In the face of the popular protest, Adidas have now backed away from the ad campaign, leaving the wall once again to the spray-paint artists.

Though Adidas refused to comment to our reporter Magda Jensen on treading on graffiti artists’ trainers, they sent out a press release saying: “We only wanted to honour street art and had the best intentions.”

Anna Robotycka from the Faceaddicted marketing and social media PR firm says that Adidas made a mistake in thinking they could get down with the kids.

“They went against their target group,” she told us. (pg)