Advertising Madness

With the World Cup coming, TV ads are getting more football oriented every day. Of course the Seleção is one of the great stars in world wide campaigns, like the Joga Bonito pieces. To our chief Bob despair, who hates Budweiser like Bush hates big words, the Anhauser Bush Company released a new campaign these days too but, at least, it’s for American football. But there are more local ads that are very interesting, filled with humor and rivalry. One of the master pieces of this trend is the ad that is being showed in Argentina that states: “Tevez haircut, 15 Reais. Brazillian ball, 40 Reais. Corinthians jersey, 50 Reais. Tevez to be the best player in Brazil, priceless”.

Other ads are just as funny as that, as Bob pointed out before me (damn!), like the Guaraná Antarctica piece with Argentinean God Maradona. My newspaper says he got something around one million dollars for wearing our shirt and singing our anthem while the M&C Sport site says 150 thousand dollars. In the commercial we see the Seleção lined up before a match to sing the Brazilian anthem. The camera travels slowly showing Ronaldo, then Kaka, then Maradona, then (WHAT?) Maradona? He suddenly wakes up in bed with the Argentinean jersey saying: “What a nightmare!!! I’ve been drinking too much Guaraná Antartica”.

This piece is really entertaining, because it is a very shocking image. Armando wearing our uniform? Why would he do that? Maradona was approached by the product manager of the soda drink, Roberto Trinas, who claims Diego was amused by the humor in it. At the end the announcer says “Every super player has, at least one day, dreamed about playing for the Seleção”.

This ad made an impact on the advertising market because it is very similar to another piece from a Brazilian cellular phone company called ‘Oi’. Ronaldinho is training with the Italian uniform, he stops, looks at his shirt scared and screams “Italy? Nooooo!!!!!” He wakes up in a tour bus wearing a Mexican coat and a loud crowd screaming “Mexico, Mexico!!!” He is terrified as he immediately unzips just to find a Spanish jersey beneath it. The loud crowd now is screaming “España, España, España!!!”

Like in the Guaraná Antarctica piece, he wakes up in bed very frightened. His cell phone is ringing and he answers it saying, “Dude, I was having such a nightmare!” The teams selected for this nightmare are in reference to the other cellular companies here in Brazil. Tim (Italy), Claro (Mexico) and Vivo (Spain). Of course both advertising agencies claim that it was pure coincidence, since there are methods to prevent this kind of situation in the propaganda association here in Brazil. The sure thing is, there will be a lot more interesting ads coming as the World Cup comes closer.

Parreira said that the players won’t be recording any other TV ads after May to prevent distractions. Can he rule over this kind of stuff? Word of mouth is that the Brazilian stars get no less than one million dollars to kick and dribble in front of the advertising cameras. Well, most of them probably won’t mind Parreira’s ruling on this, since they already have money dripping off their ears.

Here are the links to some of them:

Priceless Tevez / Maradona in Seleção / Bud in Superbowl / Old Guaraná in Beach Soccer

M&C