sjbooher: Beautiful. A.
jtherkal: Show me just about anything in sports, at this speed, in HD and I will buy your product. Which in this case is the NFL. Which I buy from Direct TV. The fansThat song was used in the Where the Wild Things Are commercial. And I guess fans in HD aren’t as good as Reggie. A-.
jtherkal: Yes! Yes, NFL, I will. I love the song, I love the visuals, and I love football. DirectTV is already billing me for my NFL Sunday Ticket. So this starts to get me fired up. The only thing is, I still think Reebok mostly sucks. Most people probably mistake this for an NFL ad. I guess since Reebok is the official outfitter of the NFL, it sort of doesn’t matter which you think it is. Peyton Manning bangs out the first of what will probably be another 1000 commercials during the upcoming season. And Eli Manning gets one in the books, even though he looks like a nerd. Maybe he’ll get some charisma when he grows up. For the NFL, A. For Reebok branding, D+.
jtherkal: SMASH! Everyone dreams of watching people in their office get crushed by a linebacker. Bringing the wondrous violence of football from the field to the office makes for gooood watching. When Terry throws that guy into the cube, smash! What are they selling? Who cares. I remember it’s Reebok and I still, to this day, go back and watch these every once in awhile. Say what you like, but in my book that’s effective advertising. Except that as an adult, I’ve never bought a pair of Reeboks. Mostly because they make ugly shoes. Advertising can’t fix that. A.
sjbooher: Agreed. Highly entertaining. One of my favorite sounds in the world is that of a good, solid tackle. They did a great job with the sound effects and dialogue on this one, making it a classic. “That ain’t new, baby!”. A+.
jtherkal: Are you ready for some football? Are you ready for it all the time, winter, summer, fall, and spring? With this new campaign, ESPN boasts that “Now Every Season Is Football Season.” I’m not sure this is going to send Arena Football viewership through the roof, but not for lack of trying. Arena Football is what it is. The NFL’s younger, less-talented brother who happens to have a wild streak and crazy rules. The campaign was done by my friend and associate GVD, out of Weiden+Kennedy NY. They’re pretty funny and get the point across. The concept is good: You think football season is over? It ain’t.
Lucid Dreaming
jtherkal: Looking at these individually, I’m not going to go easy on Gary. I love the narration about lucid dreaming, but isn’t there something less obvious he could do than trying to fly? Seems like that’s the first idea you’d have, not necessarily the best. B+.
sjbooher: This one is a little too over-the-top for me, with focus seemingly on the “lucid dreaming” joke than on the product. And I didn’t find it particularly funny, but that might just be me. C.
Grandpa
jtherkal: Again, good start. A seemingly crazy old man is fertile ground for great humor, but couldn’t you write some truly wild shit for grandpa to be saying? And the “touchdown” followed directly by “first down”? That don’t even make no sense. Or maybe give him a rabid celebration dance, where he tears off his shirt and marches around the room flexing and shouting “who wants some?” B.
sjbooher: I like this one. It’s funny, and it really focuses on the football aspect. I love the inclusion of vacuum cleaners at the end. I didn’t notice the touchdown-first down combo the first time around though. My associate is right about that. A-.
jtherkal: I didn’t even make the connection between “door to door salesman” and a living room full of vaccuums. In fact, I didn’t even notice the vaccuums at all. Nice subtle humor. Upgrade: B+.
Dog Food
jtherkal: The last one, which I can’t find, is the guy who got eye surgery then eats dog food. My comments are about the same. Decent premise, but is feeding him dog food the funniest gag? Maybe, but I think if you spent a day or two thinking of alternates you could come up with something better. B.
jtherkal: This is exactly where Victoria’s Secret should be. Once again in front of millions of grown men who spent their formative years conducting one-on-one study sessions with the catalog. And now we’re old enough to have real ladies. And yes, if we’ve behaved, they will be waiting for us after the game. Great concept, great line(let the real games begin), great placement (near the end of the game), great ad. My only criticism is this: why not show more ladies? I mean, maybe some of us like blonds. Or redheads or Latinas or black girls or Asians or girls with buzz cuts or girls with big, fake knockers. Splash up a little variety for us. We’re a melting pot. A-.
sjbooher: An amazingly beautiful lingerie model twirling a football. Perfection. Oh, and all that intelligent ad stuff my cohort said. A+.
This spot is pretty great. Some of the transitions bother me a little, but the idea of fluidly following these guys as they run through 16 weeks of a grueling season is nice. The music from Last of the Mohicans isn’t what you’d expect and really enhances the feel of the commercial. I will say that at first, I hated “Leave Nothing” as a tag. Don’t you want to leave it all on the field? As in “Leave Everything”? But now I’ve seen it enough I guess my brain has found some sort of backwards logic. If you “Leave Nothing”, that means you’ve given everything you had?
I worked on the accompanying Nike website for this, so I was there when they were filming. To give you an idea of the difference between internet and tv resources, our set had a 10′ x 10′ green screen (assembled by us and our one grip) in the middle of a high school football field. The commercial was filmed at the Rose Bowl, over the course of 2-3 days, with 50′ high, 80 yard long greenscreens. An immensely expensive spot directed by Michael Mann, hundreds of people on set and tons of extras.
Here’s about the only decent thing we could put together from our digital shoot:
If I had to grade the work we did for this campaign, I’d give it a D+ (aside from some great design work). That’s about all I’m going to say about that, unless you talk to me after six beers, in which case I’ll be much more vocal on the subject.
The good news, is I got to meet all those guys, including Megatron.