Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Nike Commercial

Background:
There was a good article on CNN on how Vanity is on the
rise among kids. They state maybe we went too far in tell every kid
that they are special.

Great Article

Just watch American Idol or My Sweet 16 and you'll see a lot of kids who
think they are stars or have a huge sense of entitlement.

Nike Commercial:
Knowing how much we talk to consumers and try to determine their overt and
secret wants in life, I pay a lot more attention to commercials. I
found this one from Nike very interesting:



Nike has a lot of indirect or aspirational
advertising. You never hear them say "buy our $100 sneakers because
they are 20% more comfortable and last 10% longer than others."

Somewhere they decided that hitting the winning shot for your team to make the crowd go crazy was not sufficient to sell shoes.

The main point of this commercial is that you want to be the guy who dunks
on the home team so that you can be the one to cause so much pain among
the home fans turning all of their cheers into agony.

The "winning the game" commercial has been done 100 times but the choice of the crowd is interesting to me. Which guy would you rather be, the one who is
carried off the court by the fans or the one who gets the entire place
to shut up and scream in pain?

Let me know if you agree with this, or if I am reading too much into it.

4 comments:

Karen said...

1) the article was a good one - thanks for sharing. I think it made some very valid points in general and i agree that a solution to the "problem" is rather blurry at this point...

2) i'd rather be the person carried off but i know plenty of people who, if answering honestly, would rather be the agony guy - they they get to enjoy praise and resentment- both forms of attention.

Tom said...

I have to say I would have typically thought about the "being carried off the field" guy but this commercial was amazing! I love the attitude it portrays. I would say this ad was less about vanity. There is no parade or celebration, this guy was anonymous, in the shadows but won the game with some flair.

Martha said...

I'd want to be the one causing the agony and pain. That'd be sweet. Using something so PETTY to stomp all over people's emotions (dude. I know what it feels like, I'm a UK basketball fan.) (plus, in "real life", my own team would carry me off on their shoulders, anyway, so I'd get the best of both worlds. :)
I'm a bitchy drama queen (or at least it would seem that way).

Finlands finest said...

I would want to be carried off and have the whole place cheering for me. I feel bad when the other team doesn't do well, I would hate to be the one to cause so much sour emotion.