NBA partner and sports footwear retailer Foot Locker is rolling new spots in its long running series of player led commercials within its ‘Fresh / Approved’ campaign ahead of the new basketball season.
The latest comic commercial stars Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green, former Chicago Bull great Horace Grant and Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child and promotes Nike’s latest NBA #Approved range.
Airing through the summer off-season and during the 2016/17 pre-season build-up, the creative’s narrative sees Green get advice on ‘standing out’ amidst a team team super stars from a couple of people who know what it’s like to be surrounded by talent.
Grant, of course, played on the Bulls ‘best team of all time’ with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippin, while Williams’ better known bandmates included Beyonce and Kelly Rowland.
This is just the latest in a long running series of comic commercials that has seen a team of NBA superstars – from Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook and Houston Rockets’ James Harden, to New York Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony and Miami Heat’s Chris Bosh – come up with creative ways of keeping their NBA Approved merchandise fresh.
There are over 120 NBA ‘Approved” items in the Foot Locker range and it feels there have been that many promotional spots too.
The running joke through all the spots in the series revolves around the extreme and comic lengths the most famous of athletes will go to keep their NBA-approved clothes and shoes as ‘fresh’ as possible.
One of the earlier spots, from back in 2012, sees Harden tear away layer-after-layer of Foot Locker-approved outfits to keep his look clean and fresh – ending with the guard pulling of the same trick with tearaways of his signature bushy beard.
Another sees Anthony, Bosh, and Love marvel at a giant blow-up boat to keep their Foot Locker merchandise from getting wet in a swimming pool.
‘The boys’ deadpan delivery and straight faces is part of the appeal of the campaign’, explains BBDO New York Senior Creative Directors Chris Beresford-Hill and Dan Lucey.
‘We wanted to make sure we treated them like athletes, not actors. These guys perform at the highest level of sport, but they are not trained in the art of improvisational comedy dialogue acting. That seems obvious, but when you’re reviewing script after script, you have to remind yourselves that these guys are in the middle of practicing with the Team USA squad, not running lines in a trailer.’
Comment
If it aint broke, don’t fix it.
That’s clearly the tactical thinking behind this long-running spot series.
And why not?
After all, many of the ads in this series have been genuinely funny.
The approach seems to continue to succeed: after all, the latest commercial has already notched up 3,957,251 YouTube views.
This campaign certainly generated plenty of engagement: not only did it trend on Twitter (helped by amplification by stars like LeBron James and his 6 million followers), but the ads also racked up impressive YouTube views too.
Links
Foot Locker YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/footlocker
Foot Locker Twitter:
https://twitter.com/footlocker
Foot Locker Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/footlocker
Foot Locker Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/footlocker/
Foot Locker Google+:
https://plus.google.com/u/1/+FootLockerofficial
Foot Locker Web:
