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Keep Soccer Beautiful!Nike's new ads cleverly slam Adidas.

By Seth StevensonPosted Monday, April 17, 2006, at 6:35 AM ET

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The Spot: A burly, bearded man with an accent sits at a video-editing console. He cues up some old footage of a little kid playing soccer. Then he intercuts this with modern-day scenes of the kid all grown up, still playing soccer. Kid and man both execute some astonishing moves, bewildering their opponents and scoring goals at will. "So my advice to you," says the bearded man, "is never grow up, my friends." As the spot ends, we see the words "Joga Bonito" and a Nike swoosh. (Click here and mouse over the right-hand side of the screen to see the ad, called "Ronaldinho—Joy.")

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When Brazil and Germany faced off in the 2002 World Cup final, it was not simply an important soccer match. It was an epic clash of logos. The German national team sported the three-stripe mark of Adidas, while the Brazilians were clad in the Nike swoosh. When Brazil won 2-0, their victory was celebrated just as fervently in Beaverton, Ore.—home to Nike world headquarters—as it was in São Paulo and Rio.

The 2006 World Cup kicks off on June 9, and both brands are already girding themselves for another battle. The German-based Adidas will have home-turf advantage (the World Cup final will be held in Berlin) and has been locking up television sponsorships. Nike has long led Adidas in overall market share (both in the United States and worldwide), but soccer is a holdout category in which Adidas maintains an edge. Nike hopes this "Joga Bonito" campaign will put an end to that.

I'm excited to see Nike turning its full attention to soccer. In the 1990s, a Nike marketing executive once explained to me, the company took a halfhearted approach to the sport. Then, during the 2002 World Cup, it made its first concerted attack on the Adidas hegemony. Still, I felt the Nike soccer ads that year were mediocre, and even a bit confusing: They featured soccer matches set, for no evident reason, within the bowels of a giant ocean tanker. The spots were filmed on grim, industrial sets. The look was murky, the marketing message murkier.

This time, the message is front and center, and the sunshine bright: "Joga Bonito." The phrase is Portuguese for "play beautiful," and it's a double-edged dig at Adidas. It reminds us 1) that the world champion Brazilians are a Nike squad, and 2) that Brazil plays a creative, dazzling style of soccer that makes the more conservative, bruising teams (ahem, Germany) seem passionless by comparison.

My favorite spot in the new campaign is the one featuring recent footage of Brazilian star Ronaldinho juxtaposed with scenes of Ronaldinho as a kid. The grown-up Ronaldinho pulls off one move—rolling his foot around the ball in midair and then darting off in a new direction—that's so breathtaking I've been watching the clip over and over. The soundtrack, all woodwinds and hand claps, perfectly embodies the spot's title: "Joy." And the dusted-off scenes of the child Ronaldinho are great fun (even though the ploy is a recycled one: A previous Nike ad showed a teeny Tiger Woods playing the British Open through the magic of video effects).

I do have one concern about the "Joga Bonito" campaign: Is it an effective way to sell soccer in the States? These ads will air all over the globe and will no doubt be a hit wherever they play … except, perhaps, here in America. First of all, the spots feature French soccer legend Eric Cantona (who is totally unknown to U.S. viewers—though so is Ronaldinho, to some extent) as their host, dressing all Euro-like and speaking with a heavy French accent. What's more, none of the players featured so far (Ronaldinho, England's Wayne Rooney, France's Thierry Henry) are American—though this is mostly because America has no superstars. But most important, the lighthearted "Joga Bonito" ethos seems to run contrary to Nike's usual message: Go for broke; take no prisoners; sweat and tears; Just Do It.

Nike's "Awake" adTake, for instance, the recent Nike ad titled "Awake"—my favorite ad of the year so far. It has all the hallmarks of a great Nike spot: superstar athletes (Tom Brady, Alex Rodriguez), a killer song (AC/DC's "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution"), and some brilliant editing (watch how the cuts accelerate as the drumbeat kicks into overdrive). But there's also an overarching message here that's smack in the middle of Nike's wheelhouse. The ad suggests that success takes hard work, dedication, and waking up early to punch the clock. It's not about "joy" and "playing beautiful"—it's about Brady studying game film before dawn, and A-Rod doing sit-ups in the gym. That's the core of Nike's brand.

Perhaps soccer is a sport with a wholly different mood, requiring a wholly different approach. But I wonder if Nike might have been better off with a set of U.S.-specific ads, showing American soccer players giving their all and muddying their uniforms. Joga Feio? (That's Portuguese for "play ugly"—I think.)

Grade: A-. Hugely entertaining spots—so much so that I'll forgive any branding missteps. By the way, alongside this campaign (and in partnership with Google), Nike is launching Joga.com, which is a sort of MySpace for soccer enthusiasts. Given all the media attention MySpace has received lately, anointing it the future of all human interfacing, I predict that, very soon, no major ad campaign will be without an accompanying "interactive community." Soon after that, we'll get deathly bored with interactive communities and move on to something else.

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Seth Stevenson is a frequent contributor to Slate. He is the author of Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

I've said it elsewhere and it bears repeating here: Ronaldinho is the most dominant player in any sport right now. […] So the ads featuring the best player in advance of the most popular sporting event in the world hardly surprises. […]

As for the message behind the ads, there is a subtle product angle. Nike is discouraging cheating and rough tactics in favor of a beautiful game involving skill and joyful dedication. Cheaters (addidas' Germany and Argentina), of course, don't really need quality gear. But if you want to win fairly, you'll need to have what Ronaldinho's having, right?.

--Catorce

(To reply, click here.)

The new Nike ads may, indeed, be subtle slams at Adidas; but they are also not breaking new ground with the kid-to-adult-athelete motif. Some of the best ads of this genre were, in fact, done by Adidas for the Women's World Cup in 1995. These offered humorous dramatizations of the stars as infants followed by inspirational clips of them in action for their national teams.

The best of these opened with a German housewife vacuuming the floor as a toddling girl watched from her crib. The mother tries repreatedly to toss the girl a ball that is lying on the floor, but each time the child beats it away. As the child shifts anxiously from foot to foot in the crib, awaiting the next incoming ball, the scene disloves to Silke Rottenberg performing the same unconscious dance in front of her net, before diving to repel a goal-bound soccer ball.

--mbjesq

(To reply, click here.)

I just saw a new Addidas commercial yesterday that might upstage the Nike ad campaign. It started will two young boys in the street challenging each other to a soccer game in the street. As they name a player to choose for their team the actual player appears from behind a fence and walks out to the kids. […] Some of the best players in the game were used like Zidane, Raul, Kahn, Riqulme, Cisse, and of course Beckham. Even past players were used like Beckenbaur and Platini. They used old footage and spliced it in. Quite clever. The commercial was slightly humorous. especially when the kid tells Jermane Dafoe to play goalie. Anyway, can't wait for half time of the WC games to see all the rest of the ads from Nike and Addidas.

--jhatchman

(To reply, click here.)

Ahh yes, The Beautiful Game. Nike's celebration of the Brazilians will indeed sell product and probably bring some new kids to the sport. Unfortunately, this simply reinforces the already nascent collective bad habits of America: focus on offense, dribbling, scoring, individual achievement. Are Brazilians effective? Yep, and once American basketball skill was considered untouchable on the international stage. Letting NBA players in seemed patently unfair. Then a funny thing happened: our American NBA All Star slam dunking, cross over dribbling, alley oopsters got their butts kicked time after time in international play (ironically, by South Americans sometimes). Why? 'cause they forgot to play defense and pass the ball. They looked good though- especially with those sweet shoes.

--soccerpurist

(To reply, click here.)

Everytime I read an article from a soccer fan, it always includes the lament that Americans don't watch soccer, as if that somehow means we're culturally deficient compared to Europe or Latin America.

Newsflash: Just because something is popular in Europe doesn't mean everyone in America has to like it, too. Soccer is a dull, boring game. And given how frequent various groups riot over soccer games, I wonder why anyone would want to import it to America. We have enough problems without encouraging hordes of 20somethings to set fire to cars because their soccer team didn't beat Ecuador.

I remember when the US hosted the World Cup and soccer fans hailed it, expecting that soccer had finally "arrived" in America and we'd all be watching it soon. And then Americans saw how the whole thing was decided by a lame shootout and the official final score was 0-0. Then we had the Women's World Cup and the only thing Americans remember from that is that girl taking her top off when she scored.

Soccer? Bah. Real football season starts in just a few months.

--Greatbear451

(To reply, click here.)

(4/27)

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