It’s one of the best things Nike has ever done and I’m including all the clothes, shoes and sports gear they make. This can be called the World Cup’s answer to a Super Bowl ad. But due to it’s scale, content and production value, WRITE THE FUTURE outdoes any Super Bowl ad I’ve ever seen.
Created by the ad firm Wieden+Kennedy and directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (AMORES PERROS, 21 GRAMS, BABEL), WRITE THE FUTURE comes in at an unusual 3 minutes long. Take a look.
Nike Write The Future from Wieden + Kennedy London on Vimeo.
The World Cup is easily the biggest sporting event ever conceived by man. You think the Super Bowl is big? A good Super Bowl rating is about 100 million viewers. Each World Cup match can draw twice that, if not more. And there are 64 matches in a tournament. That’s like 64 Super Bowls in the span of a month. Estimates from the 2006 World Cup put the cumulative viewership at over 26 billion people worldwide.
With so many people watching, it’s easy to understand the pressure that these players are under. Everyone is playing for their country (and an overwhelming majority of them are playing for free). You can be a great soccer player, but if you don’t perform in the World Cup, you’re a nobody.
And if you mess up, it’s even worse.
The ad WRITE THE FUTURE pokes fun at this pressure and presents an exaggerated look at how the fortunes of the players, their countries, and even the world can change on a well timed bicycle kick, a botched pass or a set play. An exaggeration yes, but not that far from reality. Seriously.
Take Wayne Rooney’s story: A bad pass late in a game starts a chain of events that eventually find him destitute, living in a trailer, and staring at a billboard of the Frenchman who stole the ball (and his career) from him. However, when the events are replayed and this time he goes and takes the ball back from Ribery, he is knighted. Wayne Rooney’s fortunes (and those of England) are changed on one play.
This is only a small exaggeration of what could happen to Wayne Rooney depending on what kind of tournament he has. If he performs poorly, he will be considered a goat. The press will hammer him and the American players will laugh at him. But if England wins the World Cup, and Rooney plays well, he seriously could be knighted. Babies could be named after him. Team Spain could crumple and throw newspapers. So it’s not very far from the truth.
WRITE THE FUTURE is a fantastic epic mini movie that tells 4 unique stories in 3 minutes. It stars Didier Drogba, Fabio Cannavaro, Wayne Rooney, Ronaldinho, and Christiano Ronaldo; with cameos from Bobby Solo, Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant, Homer Simpson, Gael Garcia Bernal and some of the biggest soccer stars in the world.
By the way, the ad ends with a cut to black on a free kick in a Portugal v. Netherlands match.
Now where have we seen that before?
Oh yeah… Nike’s 2008 campaign for the European Championships.
Nike: Take It To The Next Level (2008). Directed by Guy Ritchie
