Enzo’s Monday Motion #129: World Cup
In case you haven’t noticed, the world cup is just around the corner. While Dutchies see orange green and Italians are wearing feeling blue the rest of the world is high on football fever. Let me try to give you a bit of that warm feeling with these five footy campaigns.
Action Time
You can always make the games more interesting by placing a bet. Bwin knows how to trigger the football fans and created a spot that feels like an Ocean’s 11 trailer.
Agency BBH has a special branch which is fully dedicated to sports. Creative Pablo Gonzalez De La Peña teases the audience to get involved and bet on the outcome of the story. Surprisingly the bad guys aren’t the Russians. Then again, if you have Maradona on your team it’s easy to pick the bad guy. Curious how this campaign will end…
History will be made
You never know the outcome, but there’s one team that has never let me down: BBC. Their teaser trailers are always original and of high quality. This time they created a stop motion animation where 600 traditional Russian tapestries form the canvas.
It’s clear I’m not the only fan. The broadcaster’s in-house agency received 68 concepts, from which Xander Hart’s idea was selected. His pitch focuses on all the great moments in history.
I love that they stayed true to the idea and actually print over 600 tapestries. The contemporary twist is smart in multiple ways. It makes the spot fresh, and not unimportantly, feasible within production time. Director Nicos Livesey (Blinkink) was the go to man, with his experience with embroidered frames. You can say the dream team brought home the cup.
That BBC is in love with this concept becomes clear with the duration of their campaign. After the finals the tapestry production needs to produce some more meters _for an_ extended edition filled with brand new historical moments.
The Future is now
Where the BBC celebrates football by looking back, ITV focusses on the future. Not so badly chosen if you look at The Three Lion’s results of the last 50 years. ITV urges every English football fan to forget the burden of the past and focus on the game that will come.
Referring to old moments meant working with low quality footage. There fore I think the mash up style is smartly chosen. The script is really strong (except for the Italy — Holland stab ;). And what a great time to be Maradona! His face pops up in many campaigns. For him Christmas comes every 4 years.
Change
We fly over to The States where Fox has the rights to broadcast the best event of the world. Another spot filled with cameo’s. Fortunately they managed to stay original on the script side: this summer everything takes a U-turn: allies become rivals and routine becomes hazardous.
I’m curious what the budget was for this campaign looking at the amount of cameo’s. In a country where football is a different sport, they need to borrow a celebrity or two from a different sport (or genre). Also wondering what came first: the cast or the script. Big up for Wieden+Kennedy New York delivering a fun and smart commercial.
Light up the World (Cup)
Budweiser decided it’s time to leave the political heavy campaign on the bench. Let’s light up the world with a bud.
The spot has some beautiful shots and it emphasises the social and global feeling this event embodies. At the same time it feels like a very safe choice with many outdated features. Drones aren’t as cool anymore and the same thing goes for the soundtrack which dates from the last millennium. The motion looks sophisticated, but overall I would expect more from Anomaly. Especially since this is the biggest world cup campaign ever for Budweiser.
