Pichot Fronts Nike Rugby Film Saluting Argentina’s Spirit & Success at RWC 2015

Kit partner Nike celebrates Argentina’s rugby spirit and the team’s Rugby World Cup progress with a new promotional film focusing on The Pumas success under pressure.

After seven global rugby tournaments, Argentina’s national team had never finished better than third, yet the new spot, called ‘Bajo Presión /Under Pressure’ trumpets the side’s courage.

The new Nike film was launched on 18 October as a call-to-arms as the Pumas took to the pitch for the Rugby World Cup 2015 quarter final game against Ireland.

The narrative explores the theme through the person of legendary former Pumas captain Augustine Pichot and his famous call to action: ‘So 80 minutes, until we have nothing left to give. Vamos!’.

Pichot narrates the team’s journey and the challenges that have led them here: ‘As Pumas captain in 2007, I brought us to third place. Third is not first. Third is fuel to become first.’

The 2007 legend Pichot is joined in the spot by current squad players.

‘Naysayers will jest and say we are not ready to be world champions, but when I step onto the field all I will hear are chants and cheers,’ says fly half Martín Landajo.

The message is that the country and the team have changed since 2007, but the Argentine spirit remains the same.

The ad ends with the copyline ‘Win or lose, the Pumas spirit will not be denied’ and drives viewers online to www.Nike.com.

The globe’s pre-eminent sportswear behemoth is, perhaps surprisingly, only sponsoring one team at RWC 2015 – Argentina.

Nike initially launched the Pumas RWC shirt via a low key social media strand back in July.

We're #RWC2015 shirt launch crazy today! Check out the new Argentina shirts from @Nike here! pic.twitter.com/YORGLFBoYE

— Rugby Shirt Watch (@RugbyShirtWatch) July 14, 2015

Comment

This all seems like a long way and some serious backtracking from Nike’s confident assault on the rugby apparel market – perhaps best illustrated when its signed-on as England’s kit partner back in 2011 with a rather aggressive and controversial campaign that flew in the face of the team’s tradition called ‘New Blood, New Skin. New England’ (see case study).

Since then the England team has swapped kit partners and moved to stand out rugby specialist Canterbury (see our case study for Canterbury’s England ‘Launched By The Loyal’ RWC 2015 campaign).

Nerthelesss, with 378,260 views in just one week, this Nike Argentina RWC campaign looks like something of a success – especially for a brand leveraging a minority sport in a fairly small market.

Other Argentina RWC 2015 partners include Visa (which has supported the national team since 1996), Argentine telco group Personal and broadcasters ESPN and DirectTV.

Indeed, DIRECTV promoted its own England 2015 broadcast rights with a mid August, pre-tournament promotional campaign for its suite of RWC programming (which included an exclusive 24-hour channel with the best rugby from match coverage to historical documentaries).

This campaign’s central spot told the story of a magician – Juan Martin Hernandez (‘one who was born on this earth, but who knew how to conquer others’),

and also included a series of shorter blipverts as the tournament itself drew closer.

Of course, the best recent rugby campaign in Argentina in recent months was the 2015 Cannes Lions Winning ‘Tooth Implant’ initiative by sponsor Salta Beer.

This disruptive initiative, based on the insight that many of the sport’s rugby players lost teeth while playing the game, saw Salta help by replacing the teeth the players had lost during games with an implant that could also function as a beer bottle opener.

It may ostensibly be a utility campaign creating something genuinely useful for a sport where there is a problem and a need.

But that perspective, of course, is not a genuine one.

This is an innovative campaign that is all about disruption.

Links

Nike Argentina YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9lITPPkgi0pr5mbQKXjBjQ

Nike Rugby Argentina Website:

http://www.nike.com/ar/es_ar/c/rugby/camiseta-home

Nike Rugby:

news.nike.com/rugby

Nike Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/nike

Nike Instagram:

https://instagram.com/nike/