Early March saw Nike Argentina launch a campaign ahead of June’s FIFA Women’s World Cup that shines a light on the challenges female footballers must overcome and on the uneven pitch that works against women in soccer.
The campaign, created by agency R/GA Buenos Aires, is led by a hero commercial called ‘Before That’ that tells a story in reverse.
The reverse narrative arc follows the story of Candelaria Cabrera, an eight-year-old Argentine girl, who overcame prejudice to win a landmark ruling allowing her to play mixed football up until she turns t10.
The spot also features Argentinean soccer stars Ruth Bravo, Estefanía Banini and Belén Potassa.
The message is told through the backwards story structure: before becoming a champion, women have to endure hard work, criticism, playing on impossible pitches and being told that ‘you’re crazy to want to play soccer as a girl in the first place’.
(See a translated version of the ad here)
The spearhead spot was supported by print, OOH and digital content, as well as through interviews with the football players available on Nike.com.
The spot was produced by Primo’s Nicolás Pérez Veiga and Julieta Cabrera’s.
“The work tells the story of multiple women who have to overcome daily barriers that shouldn’t exist,” explained Mariano Jeger, VP and ECD at R/GA Buenos Aires.
“The idea of this campaign is to inspire athletes to overcome these and other obstacles, showing how these girls have been doing it silently and with so much effort for so long.”
Comment:
The use of a reverse-chronology creative tactic both helps this anthemic, rallying cry of a spot inspire, cut through and drive home the message in a powerful way.
It effectively communicates qualities from ‘inner strength’ and ‘unwavering confidence’, to ‘hard work’ and much, much more.
In the sports space there is always attention, adulation and praise heaped on the winners, but how did they get there and what happened along the way are often forgotten.
And this is (typically) more true for women footballers than for their male counterparts.
From inequality, a lack of opportunity, poor pitches, low wages, overt and hidden sexism, low wages and critics, trolls and haters.
With so much stacked against anyone, it might seem surprising to start the journey at all.
But, once again, Nike creative challenges girls and women footballers to “show them what crazy can do”.
This is just one local thread in Nike’s marketing lead-up to the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019 in Paris this June.
Another notable local market initiative was the brand’s USWNT shoppable Snapchat shirt campaign in early May (see case study).
And it also links to global movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp: not to mention the gender discrimination lawsuit filed by the US Women’s National Team against the United States Soccer Federation (regarding the pay gap between them and their less successful male counterparts and inequities in equipment, travel, training and medical care).
For Nike this is a fresh approach to the ongoing ‘Dream Crazier’ work first led by Serena Williams that celebrates female athletes and which was launched during the 2019 Academy Awards broadcast (see case study).
Which itself which dovetails into Nike’s award-winning ‘Dream Crazy’ anniversary platform launched last year with work fronted by Colin Kapernick (see case study).
Links:
Nike
https://www.instagram.com/nike/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+nike
R/GA Buenos Aires
https://www.rga.com/offices/buenos-aires
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