Agencies 180, Amsterdam, TBWA Worldwide, New York, director Lance Acord of Park Pictures, New York, and Nickerson Research, Los Angeles, brought the past together with the present for adidas’ "Impossible is Nothing" campaign. The six spots in the package feature vintage footage of legendary athletes in their prime juxtaposed with images of their current-day counterparts, relying heavily upon stock footage uncovered by Nickerson Research.
The first round of the campaign, which broke earlier this year, included "Laila," in which famed pugilist Muhammad Ali goes into the ring with his boxer daughter Laila Ali. The two spar, with Laila eventually landing a punch that sends her dad backwards into the ropes. The senior Ali’s part in the ad was culled from two of his fights from the ’60s, while Laila was shot in front of a blue screen. In another spot, titled "The Long Run," footage of Ali on a morning training run in Zaire, circa 1974, is combined with new shots of Laila, soccer star David Beckham and swimmer Ian Thorpe running alongside him.
The second round of ads, which broke to coincide with the Summer Olympic Games in Athens, includes runner Haile Gebrselassie ("Haile") competing against himself, gymnast Nastia Liukin taking on Nadia Comaneci ("Nadia"), and world 100m champion Kim Collins going head-to-head with legendary Olympian Jesse Owens ("Jesse"). (Clear, New York, a licensing, research and clearance company, handled footage duties on "Nadia"; Nickerson Research handled footage for "Haile" and "Jesse.")
The "Impossible is Nothing" campaign was born back in January ’03, according to Cedric Gairard, the 180 producer on the package. It was at that point in the process that the creatives developed the concepts and decided which athletes to focus on. "Choosing the athletes was different in each case," says Richard Bullock, 180 creative director/copywriter. "For instance, we wanted Kim Collins for the ‘Jesse’ spot because he had just won the world championships in Paris and had his own amazing ‘impossible is nothing’ story. Then for ‘Nadia,’ Nadia Comaneci was the one who suggested we use Nastia Liukin."
Imagery
By March, all of the athletes had been chosen, and the focus shifted to finding the necessary footage. "We had created the stories prior to shooting, and we had a good idea of the shots we wanted, which included a seamless routine on the uneven bars for ‘Nadia’ and a race involving Jesse Owens for ‘Jesse,’ " says Gairard. "These were fairly specific shots we needed to obtain."
It was at this point that Nickerson Research owner/researcher Susan Nickerson was brought onboard to find the appropriate footage and negotiate the usage rights. "Cedric and I were joined at the hip throughout most of this process, which lasted for about eight months," relates Nickerson. "He treated me as a valuable member of the creative team and provided me with ample time to fill the role of ‘footage detective.’ "
Nickerson searched the archives at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Commercial Services, FOX Movietone News, the National Film Board of Canada, the Olympic Television Archive Bureau (OTAB), and even tracked down some home movies from the 1936 Summer Games in hopes of finding "a bit of gold" for the project. "One of the most important factors was whether the material had been shot on film or video and whether we could get to a film element if it had been shot on film," she shares.
Bullock and company praise Nickerson’s efforts, which they say definitely paid off. "In most cases Susan found exactly what we had asked for," Bullock remarks. "If not, she had alternatives that perfectly fitted our needs. She also sourced original film for all but one shot, and that was invaluable because the key to making the compositing work well was using original stock."
Nickerson’s relentless pursuit of film elements translated to very few shots in the entire project coming from a video master. "180’s schedule made that possible because they gave me the time to track down obscure footage from various sources," she notes, "and more importantly, to dig to a deeper level for master elements.
"For example, I discovered one of our key ‘missing’ shots on 16mm A&B rolls in a woman’s garage, and that allowed us to use a film element rather than the extraordinarily poor video master," she continues. "There were several ‘eureka’ moments like that on this job. It was extremely gratifying to be able to share good news of that type with the hardworking creative team."
In the end, 180 wound up using about 10 archival shots in "Nadia," seven in "Jesse," and nine in "Haile."
By July ’03, the team was editing the chosen stock footage and nailing down what needed to be shot with adidas’ current crop of athletes. The athletes then got in front of the cameras against blue screen backdrops at studios in Los Angeles, Orlando and Madrid that August to get the necessary shots. Once all the new footage was complete, Acord hunkered down with Digital Domain, Venice, Calif., to weave the old seamlessly together with the new.
"Lance shot from pre-programmed angles that matched the original footage and then Digital Domain visual effects supervisor Fred Raimondi and his team inserted it into footage," reports Bullock. The daunting process included finding just the right size and color needed to blend the two pieces together, but the process was not as painful as it might sound. "To see the routine of the gymnasts come to life, for instance, was amazing," says Bullock. "We would swing the modern gymnast past Nadia and then ask Fred to make them narrowly miss each other, etc. It was amazing."
The postproduction process lasted from September ’03 to February ’04. Eric Zumbrunnen of Spot Welders, Venice, cut the spots; music was composed by Ren Klyce of Mit Out Sound/M.O.S., Sausalito, Calif., with audio post from Lime, Santa Monica.
Bullock notes that the "Impossible is Nothing" campaign was quite a "special" undertaking, but has no plans to shoot more of the challenging spots. "It was a big, time-consuming job, so it is probably best to leave it at six executions and then move on and do some- thing new," he says. "Besides, I think we made the best spots pos-sible using the past and present adidas athletes. There is nothing I feel we should have done differ-ently."
