The last time Nike and Wieden + Kennedy got together for a massive advertising push was for the Football World Cup and most would agree the end result, ‘Write the Future‘, was one of the best sporting commercials of all time. But it’s taken things up a notch for the launch of the 2012 European Championship with the brilliant and multi-layered My Time is Now.
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The three minute epic was shot in London, Barcelona and Madrid by director Adam Berg via Stink and shows how the young players from ‘The Chance,’ Nike’s effort to find 100 new soccer stars from 50 countries, are nipping at the heels of the current crop of stars.
As well as a who’s who of international football, there’s also a cameo from LeBron James and, after launching a few days ago, it has already clocked in with close to 12 million views.
But it goes much further than a great TVC, because there are a series of ‘rabbitholes‘ (such as a Sonic the Hedgehog-style video game with Neymar and a trip to the Nike barber shop with Mario Balotelli) to be discovered in the main clip that offer a deeper look at some of the athletes and their inspirations.
Youtube VideoDigital technology is changing the way we tell stories, as Frank Rose points out in his book The Art of Immersion. And Nike, a company that knows all about the power of creativity in business, is, perhaps unsurprisingly, at the forefront of this deep media trend.
