Plenty of brands are involved at the World Cup.

The official tier ones:

adidas
Coke
Emirates
Hyundai
Sony
Visa

According to an article on the BBC recently, each pays £75 million to be an official partner.

Yep. £75 million.

Of course that gets you an awful lot; exposure, ‘officialness’, access, prestige.

But consider this;

Search for “adidas world cup” and “Nike world cup”.

Nike don’t spend a penny on World Cup sponsorship. Instead they choose to focus on the creative exploitation of the World Cup. To great effect;

This isn’t an anti-sponsorship post. Because it’s quite clear, splashing that kind of cash can provide you with a great opportunity to leverage the sponsorship well. The focus should be on moving sponsorship away from a badging exercise.

So that’s why I quite liked the Hyundai team bus message initiative. 55,000 slogans were received when Hyundai asked for suggestions what to put on the team bus. And quite a clever thought to maximise the team bus – loads of PR coverage pre-game.

Often it can be little ”micro ideas’ like these which can often prove of great value as well as the big blockbusters… whether you’re an official sponsor or not

So, when I did my usual weekend trawl of online football goodness, I came across this on one of my usual football feeding troughs.

Here’s the full version;

Straight away I had the urge to share this. I showed my flatmate who already had a youtube link of his own up his sleeve (goddamit) of some insane skills from a six year old French Algerian boy…

What’s the common denominator that turned them both into ‘spreadable media‘?

There was a narrative. A story. A hook. A deep understanding of what will get me excited and want to share with my peers. Are W&K now a PR agency?! If so, I’m sure they’d be pleased with their coverage for this.

Never mind, though what I thought was interesting was the accompanying ad spot from W&K towers for the same Nike 5 campaign released a week later

Although I like it and it certainly imbues all the brand qualities that I’m sure Nike would want to communicate, wouldn’t they have been better using the media spend on the initial Rooney nutmeg footage and just end on the swoosh after the megs? Would this not have just amplified the talkability even more of the campaign rather than another ad alongside another set of ads? Isn’t there an argument that the nutmeg would have gained even greater stand out because it is ‘content’ in a prime time ad slot (a talkable factor in itself) rather than on youtube (where my flatmates and I can guarantee to find this kind of material and waste away a Saturday morning)? Wouldn’t Nike want people to google/youtube their “ads”?!

The view counts on the two videos speak for themselves though I guess;

The ad; released on the 20th Feb; 5,995

The nutmeg; released on the 13th Feb; 200,000 + cumulative views

Needless to say, none of my football team-mates have seen the ad, but nearly all of them has passed on the Rooney nutmeg.

Either way, a cracking bit of skill whatever way you look at it or found it.

Of course, I’m not sure the Nike business model quite stacks up to producing all their boots in the same way though I pretty much manage to hoodwink myself every Saturday afternoon that they are at the moment when I pull on a pair and imagine the “craftsmanship” that has gone into my footwear and consequently will turn me into a world beater. Unfortunately, this dream is normally shattered after my first touch of  a ball.

Aaah, the power of a decent video and a decent story to create a bit of product theatre. Unfortunately when it comes to footy boots, I’m a sucker every time.

I like it.

It’s strange isn’t it how hoodies get a bad rep, yet down Clapham way there are shitloads of ‘hoodies’ (Jack Wils) and all they seem to do is sit about in their pyjamas all day drinking frocca chocca pimms lattes outside the common. Not a peep out of any of them.

Ok, point being, it’s not the ‘hoody’ that is causing the social tension, it’s the perception of what the hoody represents and Nike appear to be attempting to redefine this by debuncting what it means when someone has their hoody pulled up (“it’s not threatening, it’s not that I don’t want to be spotted by those pesky CCTV cameras ‘cos I’ve just nicked a load of pick ‘n mix. Oh no. I just need my hoody up when I’m writing in my moleskine  so I can get in my creative zone and contemplate life’s strifes ;)). Which is clever. And they’re doing it by telling a story. Which is interesting (and why it’s receiving news attention).

Will it be a gamechanger? Who knows, but ad campaigns that are topical, tap into some sort of cultural tension and yet stay true to what the brand is trying to do (in this case flog hoodies thus entering into the conversation legitimately because it directly affects their business), are sure to be successful and will inevitably have newsworthiness eventually allowing their message to creep into earned media too.

This is lovely. It really is. Courtesy of the guys over at Adland.  Interesting that the ad focuses on the heritage of the supporters of the team Torres plays for, Liverpool, who are sponsored by Nike’s arch-rivals adidas, rather than focusing on the player’s individual attributes. In the real world, that doesn’t matter, though if El Nino decides to leave Liverpool for chelsea this summer, not sure the paella at the Capital of Culture dinner will go down quite so well.

So I’ve moved from here.

Tumblr through it’s simplicity as a platform, and believe me, that’s great for simpletons like me, was getting on my nerves a little. So I’ve switched to WordPress having been acquainted myself with it from writing here.

And to kick things off, I stumbled across this and thought it was pretty cool. It’s a brilliant example of a brand listening online to the sentiment around it’s brand. Nike have decided to launch the famous Marty McFly trainers he sported in Back to the Future 2. Unfortunately, the high-concept trainers don’t tie themselves together like they do in the film but they certainly look the part.

 The site is a another great example of the power of the interweb and a brand harnessing it to lead their product development and marketing activity. The amount of column inches achieved will no doubt be bread and butter stuff for any PRO’s involved and the scope for creative print and advertising work is the stuff of creative dreams (that’s if they decide they need to spend any money on advertising). It shows to their Nike enthusiasts too that their voice is listened to which will only go on to deepen relationships with these advocates and encourage them to create natural word of mouth around the product launch as they have had a great deal of ownership of the ‘project’ (note project, not campaign). Co-creating with fans is powerful stuff, brands just need to open their ears a little more than they are doing at the moment and follow Nike’s lead.