Welcome to the highly anticipated third entry highlighting commercials leading up to the World Cup. See the previous two installments here and here. There are more and more commercials coming out, so I’m going to start filtering them a bit and just post ads worth watching, for better or worse.
When Louis Vuitton decides they are going to run some World Cup themed ads they don’t settle for anything less than the best. So they get Pelé, Maradona, and Zidane together to play a couple games of foosball.
This Sony ad is surprisingly not as lame as it could have been. I think the kids really sell the whole concept.
ESPN has decided that they are going to run the craziest ads. Now we get an ad telling us that people love the World Cup so much it just makes everyone want to have sex with everyone else. Although I do think I have heard that they have documented a significant uptick in worldwide pregnancies nine months after the World Cup. Who did they get to narrate this one, Hugh Hefner?
Ok, I know there are still three weeks or so to go before the World Cup starts, but I think I’m ready to call a winner. At a length of three minutes though, it’s more of a promotional short film than a commercial, so it’s a little unfair to compare it against the other ads featured so far. I don’t really know where to start on this one, it packs in so much in those three minutes.
We start off with Didier Drogba, who is quickly becoming the face of World Cup 2010. I like how throughout the entire ad they do a good job of capturing the essence of the culture for each country, like when Cannavaro saves Drogba’s shot and it flashes to Cannavaro enjoying la dolce vita back home in Italy. Rooney gets the clearance but his pass is intercepted by Ribery. Great little shot of Howard and Donovan enjoying Rooney’s downfall. But Rooney decides he’s not going to go down like that and dispossesses Ribery. Ronaldinho ends up with the ball and gets up to his old tricks. Someone should have told Nike that Ronny wasn’t a sure thing for Brazil’s World Cup squad because, er, he didn’t make the team this year. Cristiano Ronaldo is not my favorite player by a long shot, but he doesn’t annoy me here. The Simpsons take was great, I feel like I’m going to call him Ron-al-D’OH from now on.
So the Nike Write the Future ad is taking top honors so far, and with 3 million views in 5 days most people reading this will have probably already seen the ad. We’ll be back with part 4 once there are some new ads worth talking about, which will probably be soon.
