From couches to celebrations to comedy and poignancy–that’s just a taste of the creative range reflected in the crop of 2010 FIFA World Cup advertising thus far. While we’re familiar with couching one’s words, how about couching one’s concepts? Several ads and marketing initiatives of note have stayed at home and not taken the playing field, perhaps the most notable being Budweiser’s Bud House which has placed 32 soccer fanatics–from 32 different countries–under one roof in South Africa for the duration of the World Cup. The fans will watch all the matches together, and engage in a series of competitive, charitable and hopefully entertaining activities.
Viewers can get to know the different personalities of the Bud House contestants–rewarding or penalizing them depending on their behavior–by visiting a dedicated YouTube page: www.BudUnited.com where video from the Bud House and other varied content as well as links to the contestants’ Facebook and Twitter pages can be accessed. It’s reality TV meets the World Cup live, compliments of DDB Chicago and Tribal DDB Amsterdam, with RSA Films and South Africa’s Rocket Films serving as the production companies.
The couch can also prove to be a mode of transportation to the FIFA World Cup matches as we see fans riding their sofas through village and city streets to the soccer stadia–an offbeat, upbeat slice of life featured in Sony Bravia’s “Sofas” directed by Alejandro Toledo and produced by The Asylum Cape Town through The Asylum Dubai office for Team Y&R Dubai. (Toledo is repped stateside by ACA Films and throughout the world by varied houses, including Hooligan Filmworks in Canada.)
While people stay on their couch yet are mobile in the Sony Bravia spot, a Visa Europe commercial centers on a man who leaves his couch potato station in life, running seemingly continuously from his living room across the globe–all the way to a stadium in South Africa, a journey powered by his Visa Card which he uses to buy essentials along the way. As his journey progresses, the flabby gent slims down, grows a beard, and grabs a quick shave in order to make a clean-cut debut on the soccer field. He ends up scoring a goal and breaking into celebration in this spot which ties Visa Europe into the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, dovetailing with the ongoing “life flows better with Visa” strategy. Chris Palmer of Gorgeous Enterprises (who is handled in the U.S. by Anonymous Content) directed “Football Evolution” for Saatchi & Saatchi, London.
Getting off the couch to hop aboard a celebratory creative theme, consider Coca-Cola’s “Longest Celebration” digital campaign inviting fans to film and upload their own goal celebrations to www.YouTube.como/Coca-Cola or http://celebrations.coca-cola.com. Clips submitted online or through mobile phone uploads are being edited into a continuous loop to create a non-stop celebration that will appear on the website throughout 2010. The Longest Celebration YouTube channel is localized in more than 100 countries, providing an experience in local languages as part of what’s being billed as the largest scale partnership between YouTube and any other company. Grand prize and mini competitions for the best, most entertaining celebrations were held leading up to the World Cup.
Designed by integrated marketing agency SapientNitro, “Longest Celebration” is a prime online element in Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the 2010 World Cup. The initiative has helped to connect fans across all continents together online to celebrate the vibrancy and rhythm of Africa and the FIFA World Cup experience even if they are not there first hand–although some lucky Grand Prize winning fans received flights, accommodations and World Cup match tickets. The online destination spans other digital components including widgets that allow fans to receive news/information feeds regarding the World Cup, to listen to music tracks, and to watch videos of goal celebrations featured in a film documentary. Through sharing features on the videos and widgets, fans also can post content to their favorite social networking site, web page or blog. Additional social media elements include content on the Coca-Cola Facebook Fan page and through the Coke Twitter feed.
As an additional digital component for videogame aficionados, the EA Sports 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa title features Coca-Cola celebrations which can be unlocked through special codes from EA Sports and Coke channels in participating countries. After unlocking each celebration, fans can score a goal and use the controller to activate the celebrations.
“Write The Future”
Meanwhile launched this month on nikefootball.com was a Facebook initiative where fans can use their own Facebook photos and information, generating a personalized video so they can “write their own future” in football. This is a follow-element in a campaign for which the centerpiece is “Write The Future,” a three-minute film with a storyline that celebrates the game, features some of its biggest stars and the impact of the World Cup on both them as well as the fans–complemented by some notables from outside the soccer realm such as Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant and Homer Simpson. The short, which plays like an epic mini-movie, was directed by feature filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel) of Independent, London, and Anonymous Content for Wieden+Kennedy, Amsterdam and London.
Written by Stuart Harkness and Freddie Powell of W+K, London, “Write The Future” showcases a series of international football stars (Wayne Rooney, Christiano Ronaldo, Ronaldhino, Didier Drogba, Theo Walcott, Cesc Fabregas, Fabio Cannavaro) in their quest for victory and how one moment can mark heroic achievement (resulting in Rooney being knighted, toying with tennis great Federer in a ping pong match) or dismal defeat (with Rooney becoming a bearded, washed up, overweight shell of a man who’s living in a caravan), in turn sending a ripple effect across the globe, impacting not only fans who live vicariously but also nations’ mindsets and economies. The World Cup in essence infiltrates all of society.
As for the alluded to poignancy in the World Cup ad mix, W+K Worldwide turned out a :45/:30 titled “Robben Island” for ESPN and FIFA World Cup directed by Lance Acord of Park Pictures. The spot opens on a sleeping prisoner, followed by images of the penitentiary grounds, guards and several inmates preparing to play soccer. A voiceover relates, “A defining moment in South Africa’s history wasn’t an uprising or a coup. It was the formation of a soccer league by political prisoners during apartheid. Prisoners who’s lost their freedom, but found hope in a game they loved.”
A guard throws a ball out for the prisoners’ team and a hard fought game ensues. Several inmates watch, including a man resembling Nelson Mandela. Accompanied by U2’s track “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the voiceover continues, “The same men who’d go on to govern the new South Africa, and then repay the game by inviting the world to come and play it with them. The 2010 FIFA World Cup on ESPN.” A parting tag reads, “One game changes everything.”
Cup comedy
In sharp contrast to the historical and social significance of “Robben Island” are assorted examples of World Cup ad comedy, a prime one coming in a Hyundai campaign directed by Rocky Morton of MJZ for agency Innocean.
The campaign’s two spots are titled “Baby’s Name” and “Die Hard.” The former plays like a home movie circa the 1960s in which a little girl has a large birthday cake that can barely hold her full name–in that she was named after every player on England’s soccer team.
Meanwhile “Die Hard” takes us to a funeral in which on display in an open casket is an elderly man decked out in football regalia, his face painted and holding a soccer ball. Both the corpse and the girl with the lengthy name demostrate to what lengths football fans take their loyalty, a natural segue to Hyundai owners showing their loyalty by choosing to again buy a Hyundai, number one in customer loyalty according to a recent survey.
Opening video
VFX/post boutique STEELE Studios teamed up with Sony and DNA to kick off the 2010 FIFA World Cup in style with the official music video for the World Cup song ‘Waka Waka’ (“Time for Africa”), performed by Shakira and featuring Freshlyground. One of the highlights of the tournament’s opening ceremony and watched by hundreds of millions of viewers around the world, “Waka Waka” was finished by Jerry Steele on STEELE’s new Quantel Pablo 4K. Not only is it the first ever Stereo3D video to be shown at the World Cup, “Waka Waka” is also one of the world’s first Stereo3D music videos and instantly achieved worldwide recognition–it has already been viewed over 13 million times on YouTube alone.
The video was produced by DNA under the direction of Marcus Raboy for Sony Music Entertainment. The video has a strong party atmosphere with crowds dancing and singing along to the Waka waka and features footballers Gerard Pique, Dani Alves, Lionel Messi and Carlos Kameni. It also features a highlights reel of some of the great moments in World Cup soccer over the last few decades.
“The video was shot by Vince Pace [Avatar and many other notable 3D stereo projects including Titantic in 3D] using camera systems developed by them for 3D stereo capture,” said Jo Steele, STEELE studios joint founder and executive producer. “There’s no room for mistakes when shooting 3D and having Pace film the video guaranteed that the very best footage would be made available…We had to finish a 3D version, 2D English, and Spanish versions. The 3D version is also being shown in Sony’s 3D World Pavilion in Nelson Mandela Square, and will be shown in 3D on Bravia sets in Sony stores around the world.
