this is violence

Remember a few weeks ago when Nike dropped their commercial for the World Cup and it was the best commercial ever? And then remember when everyone was pointing to the survey showing that Nike and swooped in and stolen all the World Cup buzz from Adidas?

Well – this came out today. I’m always hesitant to reference surveys where I don’t know the methodology, but it does seem to suggest that Adidas’ consistent, multimodal approach is outpacing Nike’s single event.

“Half the game in buzz is ‘fanning the flames’. The Adidas football facebook page, for instance, is now up to over a million fans and they are dropping new content several times a day, all while the average post is generating upwards of 100 comments. At the end of the day, brands need to keep the buzz ball in the air as long as possible – sponsored or otherwise,”
- Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of digital strategy at Nielsen.

Too often advertising gets confused with marketing, and the result are efforts that focus on single spikes of awareness rather than long-term affinity. Making a commercial like Write the Future is incredibly expensive and while it generated a lot of buzz early on, without support, there are just too many other things happening all the time for it to remain front of mind.

More over, this style of marketing lacks any ability to react or adjust. WK and Nike took a big gamble that least ONE of the players in the commercial making it deep into the World Cup, now it would seem they’re stuck with a commercial that is irrelevant. You’d think both WK and Nike would have learned their lesson after the Kobe/Lebron playoff commercials.

I wonder how much better that budget could have been spent developing projects to actually connect with fans regardless of the outcome of the games rather than a mini-movie. It’s not that great advertising isn’t important, but it’s not a replacement for being there, interacting with your customers and creating the kinds of experiences that can last over time.