Stefan Krogh-Hansens blog

World Cup 2010 is coming soon and we all know that means a lot of fantastic football and entertainment, but it also means a lot of big business. The eyes of billions of television viewers, an estimated three million international visitors and an unnumbered large sport journalist crowd will be focused on this event. Especially products directed to the male population fits right in at event like this. A high profile international event like this is a golden opportunity for the large international power brands to come out and play – Puma, Adidas and Nike are of course no exception to this.

In this blog post I will focus on the TV spots of the sports brands Puma, Adidas and Nike.

Adidas

Puma

NIKE

Analyzing a TV ad (or any other ads for that matter) is all in all very difficult as it all comes down to what ever objectives the advertisers have and in the end if the majority of the target audience are convinced by the ad. Therefore this post will be flavored with my own personal preferences.

To me a good football trailer/ad for a world cup like this could have the following ingredients;

• Tribute to the game
• Have some important football super stars in it
• Make use of the culture from the nation where the cup is being held
• Have music that supports the spot
• Create the emotions and anticipation for the tournament
• Bring the brand to live and give a clear signature

The Adidas spot is 30″. To me it really is a tribute to the game with the kids playing in the bare feet. It doesn’t have any stars in the spot however but I am actually not missing it since it is a different story to tell here. It is definitely using the culture of South Africa, very well indeed -- this is actually among the strongest elements in this spot with the kids playing and kicking a home made ball. It is also in respect to the poverty in the country that they are not running around in expensive Adidas shoes and it is also in respect to this element (I think) that they do not use overpaid football stars. The music is spot on and supports the ad very well with its African tones. To me it doesn’t create any anticipation for the tournament at all, but again I don’t think that this was the purpose of the spot. The end with the characteristic three lines being painted on the foot is genius. It rounds up the spot and it embraces the universe that spot is made in.

The Puma spot is app. 1 min and 30 seconds which makes it more like a trailer than a TV spot. It is shot by Syrup  (global advertising agency for PUMA Teamsport), and it is the latest in the LOVE=FOOTBALL campaign which is everything from chalk drawings and stickers to websites, billboards and now this. I think one of the strongest elements of the spot is the tribute to the game (Love = football). The passion for football is really showing and especially it conveys the emotions that football creates for the audience as well as players. It doesn’t have a lot of stars in it compared to the Nike spot, but it does some players in it -- nothing that would really impress a european kid (Samuel Eto’o, Gervinho, Emmanuel Eboue and Mohammed Zidan). As with the Adidias spot Puma also uses the culture of South Africa in their spot. Again here the focus is also on the fact that the host for the tournament isn’t that wealthy but still have the passion for football. It is for sure a strong image to convey as it is a sign of POWER and strong commitment, but from a marketing point of view it is not the best communication in my opinion from the sole reason that everyone uses it -- the positioning is therefore not that unique. The music is from Gnarls Barkley and I think it supports the spot quite well.  The logo signature is only a few seconds in the end so if this is your first rendevouz with the campaign message (like it was for me) then you might end up not remembering who the sender was. I am not sure that I connect the campaign message directly to the brand. So all in all I think the spot is ok, but not really outside the box and I would be concerned that the audience wouldn’t remember the sender of the spot.

The Nike spot is a bit longer than 3 minutes. The spot is directed by the Hollywood Director and Producer Alejandro G. Iñarritu (21 Grams, Babel) and it is featuring all the famous soccer spree stars; Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Fabio Cannavaro, Franck Ribery, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Patrice Evra, Gerard Pique, Ronaldinho, Landon Donovan, Tim Howard, Thiago Silva and Ronaldinho. The latter has not been picked for the Brazilian national team for this tournament so I guess this has probably been a discussion at the executives weekly round table discussions at Wieden + Kennedy (Wieden + Kennedy shot the spot).

To me the Nike spot is the best of the three. They manage to show emersion, passion, how important this game is and they have a good emotional tagline with “Write the story”. I am as a viewer not questioning who the sender is as they manage to show their logo in numerous occasions e.g. the billboard, the sponsorship on the pitch etc. I think the logos are shown quite subtle without the integration getting too corny. What they don’t use is the culture of South Africa. Basically it could have a trailer for any tournament. It doesn’t bring the spot down in any way though, it actually sets it apart from the other spots out there. All three spots(+actually Coke and Pepsi) use the African culture in some way in their spot but Nike writes history. Thumbs up (I wonder what their budget for this was )

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Let me start by stating than I am no better than the rest. I also love to “hate” / dislike some of the so called celebrities that has gained space in the press during the last few years.

I don’t know how it is in other countries, but in Denmark we have seen more than a handful of these celebrities arise from some of the popular tv shows as the likes of Robinson, Paradise Hotel, “single life” etc. Some of these newcomer celebrities has become some we love to hate. This made me think about this phenomenon within the frames of what I in earlier post refer to as social groups.

The interesting thing about these celebrities that really break out of the show is that they do not fit in the largest social groups (they of course have some sort of niche fanbase), but in general we hate/dislike them because they do not fit in. If we look at the reality stars that actually are like the most of us, they never really seem to break out of the show and do something new with their career. However those that are different than the “normal” norms seems to get more exposure in the media.

Key here is of course positioning. They are different and bring something new and fresh. The fact that they are different “originals” is what got them casted in the first place and this is also what gets them promoted via PR in the tabloids afterwards. We love to agree that they are not fitting in our group.

So why is it these persons get hired for photoshoots, as bartenders, get free drinks at nightclubs etc?

First of all, the mere exposure from the reality show is of course an important factor not to forget about. They are of course hugely exposed during the time when that runs on TV. The question that remains to me is still, how they make a living out of the fact that eveyone dislikes them?

I think their “anti”-popularity is primarily driven by their fantastic PR. They are so good at getting coverage that they often appear several times per week in all the biggest tabloids. I think that to some extent it is just a good story to spread. We love to agree with peers and here is a golden opportunity to agree to the fact that this reality star is out of place. So this is why we want to have them at parties, bars, photoshoots etc.  – to mock them and to point our fingers at them while we all agree that we would never do that.

E.g. in Denmark there is a reality-star called Sidney Lee. He has roughly 9.000 fans. The counter fan group called “can this pineapple get more fans than Sidney Lee” got 28.000 fans in 24 hours!!! It has 182.000 fans now. To comparison the more well-known famous actor Brad Pitt has 27.200 fans. This clearly shows the emotions of “hating” someone is way stronger than when you think good of someone.

What do you think?

(picture taken from billedbladet.dk)

EDIT: I stumbled upon this article that I found very interesting in regards to celebrities (DANISH ONLY, sorry): http://politiken.dk/kultur/tvogradio/article983033.ece

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