Battle of the 2010 World Cup Commercials

One of the peripheral reasons why I’ve grown to prefer fútbol to the other major spectator sports popular in the U.S. of A. (baseball, basketball, and American football) is the minimal presence of commercials during playtime. This is not to say that there are no advertisements during a typical fútbol broadcast (broadcasters have to devise ways of surreptitiously inserting audio-based or augmented reality ad spots), but the complete absence of time-outs (only one 15 minute half-time is given between the two 45-minute halves) allows “the beautiful game” to flow uninterrupted in the chess-box machinery of its strike-and-defend zones and counter-strike strategies. The continuous unpredictability of fútbol, in short, engages us to closely study its pensive, circular physics.

Nevertheless, the lack of commercial time during a game does not necessarily prevent the inherent commercialization of the biggest sports event in the world: the FIFA World Cup. The past month has already seen a cash-money face-off between the biggest sports gear companies on earth, as they duel in their very own World Cup of Commercials. No, these commercials probably aren’t as big a deal to the average fútbol fan (as say the commercials which take up a sizable percentage of the Super Bowl telecast are to the average tuned-in American), but this year there have been some impressive productions. Watch them after the jump.

First on the list is Nike’s “Write the Future” advertisement, surely the most expensive and grandiose of the bunch. Slate‘s Seth Stevenson calls it “the greatest ad [he's] ever seen,” and he points out that not only is “Write the Future” a shining example of Nike’s renewed dominance of the football marketing field, but more incredibly, of the way in which they have done so at the expense of other football-geared sports wear companies, in particular, Adidas (who had controlled the football market for decades before Nike entered the fray during the 1994 World Cup). According to Stevenson, Nike spent nearly a year planning the commercial with über ad agency Widen + Kennedy, hired Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu to direct it, and basically used every available sports star licensed by their deep coffers to saturate the fast-paced, multiple chronology scenario. Iñárritu on his own brings in Gael García Bernal for a cameo, while Nike marches out the Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba, Italia’s Fabio Cannavaro, England’s Wayne Rooney, France’s Franck Ribéry, Brazil’s Ronaldinho (who in fact was controversially cut from Brazil’s squad) and, last but not least, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, who was at one time the world’s most expensive fútbol player and thus by extension Nike’s most prized asset. The advert ends with a dramatic recreation of a Cristiano Ronaldo free kick, of which the trademark execution is an event unto itself. Even Roger Federer and Kobe Bryant show up to support the proceedings:

Adidas, beaten to the punch by Nike’s monster-sized assault, decides to counter with a fittingly counter-intuitive gesture. The focus no longer on the psycho-mechanics of fútbol, Adidas chooses to capitalize on their deal with the Star Wars brand to recreate the cantina scene from Episode IV. Rather than lining up their own roster of star players (among them England’s captain Steven Gerrard and Argentina’s Lionel Messi, current FIFA World Player of the Year and by wide consensus “the world’s top performing player,” if not already the greatest fútbol player of his generation), the company instead invites pop culture types, mainly from the music scene, to litter the circa-1970s outer space dive. The appearance of Daft Punk, Snoop Dogg, Ciara, Noel Gallagher and Ian Brown proved sufficient to elicit Prefix and Pitchfork‘s usually non-sports-related attention, and it even has others claiming (though admittedly from a Star Wars fan’s perspective) that it too is the greatest advert ever made. For bizarre reasons known only to the company, a Canadian hockey-loving actor named Jay Baruchel makes a key appearance, managing to accidentally assassinate one of Jabba the Hutt’s cronies; but David Beckham (who, along with Franz Beckenbauer, is the only person, place or thing connecting the ad to fútbol at all) cleans up the bloody mess with a limey-cool one-liner (maybe as a way to make up for the “bad English” examples posed by Noel Gallagher and Ian Brown’s pub antics). The Adidas ad ends with the slogan “Celebrate Originality,” seemingly out of spite for Nike’s more straight-ahead futbol campaign:

Puma, the other big-time football gear company, provides us “The Journey of Football”, an advert that is considerably less interested in coming off as clever as it is in capturing the emotion of a whole continent. Its angle takes off from the fact that the 2010 World Cup is being hosted for the first time ever by South Africa and, indeed, by the entire African continent. In place of the usual slate of European stars, Puma brings to our attention the emotions and skills of the African fans and players who will feature prominently during the Cup: Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o, Ivory Coast’s Emmanuel Eboué and Gervinho, and Ghana’s Michael Essien are just a few who turn up (unfortunately, Essien has been recently ruled out of the Cup because of injury). The choice to include Egypt (who is not in this year’s Cup though Egypt is the current Africa Cup of Nations champion) rather than Algeria (who is in the Cup, and at Egypt’s expense) is a strange choice considering that both teams are sponsored by Puma; but this may be attributed to the high profile of Egypt’s Mohamed Zidan as a rising star worthy of a brief cameo. Set to the music of Gnarls Barkley’s “Going On”, the advert pulsates with more genuine emotion than the other contenders and ends on a slogan that succinctly defines the integral unifying spirit of the game: “Love = Football”:

For more World Cup commercials (including adverts that spotlight England’s more intense, sometimes wacky, love of the game) check out this link.

The love of fútbol is so deep that some countries are advising businesses to suspend all transactions during the hours when the national team takes to the field, and are even financing schools to install televisions in the classroom so that students can take in the more important educational matter of football dynamics. Be prepared. The 2010 FIFA World Cup begins tomorrow.