The World Cup is finally here, and with that comes some stellar promotional video material from two of football’s, or soccer as most Americans know it, most prominent brands: Adidas and Nike. So lets look at some of the recent releases and compare their content that they are socially sharing.
Adidas
Their first marketing push leading up to the world cup covered the official ball that will be used in the World Cup matches, the Brazuka Ball. The video features cameras on the ball and the various players kicking the ball around. This video has had slow success and has a little over 4 million views since it’s release in December of 2013.
Their next release was the the first of a set of features based on their All or Nothing campaign. Proving to be more successful, this campaign has received 33 million views since May 24, of 2013. The video features Messi, Alves, Ozil, Suarez and others and covers what players go through leading up to the world cup.
The latest video released is their major push for views in a video advertisement titled ‘House Match’. This video features David Beckham, one of the only household names to those in the United States, Zinadene Zidane, Gareth Bale and Lucas Moura. As Beckham and Zidane watch the others play soccer in the FIFA video game, they decide to instead kick the ball around the house, breaking miscellaneous items including Beckham’s glass trophy display, showing off 20 years of hard work.
Nike
Nike has taken its approaches entirely different since they are not official sponsors of the World Cup. However, nike has really focused in the areas of digital content creation, online marketing and social media as a way to push their videos and get their presence out.
‘Winner Stays On’ is a video that features some of Nikes most notorious endorsed players from Ronaldo, Roony,Neymar Jr, Ibrahimovic, Hazard, Ineista and more. The video shows a couple of English boys playing where the winner of the match will stay on the field. There are also guest appearances from Kobe Bryant, Anderson Silva and even the Hulk. The field slowly turns into a large stadium, clearly representing the superstars playing in the world cup. Their subtle approach has surely paid off with 75 million views since april 25th, 2014.
Nike The Last Game: Nikes latest video, The Last Game is an animated video that is a story about taking risks. This video is a beautiful animation and competes with the animation levels of Pixar and Dreamworks. Showing off the quirkiness and attitudes of the players, this video will surly be a great hit. The video has already made great headway as it has gained 27million views since June 9th, 2014, which has only been 3 days from writing this post.
If I had to choose who is doing a better job, I would have to give it to Nike. Their videos have gained higher view rates faster than Adidas, and they are doing a stellar job of keeping up with Adidas, even though they are not an official sponsor of the the World Cup.