Whose house? OUR HOUSE!

I am currently in the process of finding a link to Nike's newest football commercial, but the first time I saw it I literally got goosebumps. It is that good. EDIT: To view the commercial, go to www.nikegridiron.com, let the site load, and then click on "Watch the exclusive 'I Promise' spot" in the lower left-hand corner of the image.

The spot doesn't even feature any people on screen. It's just a series of black-and-white photos - a high school football field in Florida, the inside of a locker room, a pile of shoulderpads, a weight room - with the sound from typical workout and pregame locker-room rituals dubbed over it. The speed of the images and the intensity of the background noise builds until the end, when you hear about seventy male voices being led by one: "Whose house?" "OUR HOUSE!" before the typical blank screen with the swoosh and "Just do it." I know it sounds cheesy, but when you're watching it it's ungodly good.

For all their hypey Michael Vick shit, Nike has been the absolute untouchable king of the advertising world for years, and people hate them for it. Advertising is cutthroat. But really, is it that difficult to be good? Nike's ads have consistently proven that they are willing to put just a little more effort into something that pays off HUGE. An ad like their most recent football spot requires just that minimal expenditure of effort in the concept development department, and it's probably going to win all kinds of awards and stick with people a hell of a lot more than their competitors' ideas, which all seem to be "Let's throw money at a young marquee athlete and just show him dunking on someone in our shoes." Nike learned a long time ago that great commercials don't have to be expensive or ostentatious, and that, for the most part, the simpler the better.

The problem with TV spots is that to succeed, companies only need to put something out there that's marginally less terrible than their competitors' efforts. The most important thing is omnipresence, not quality - planting that seed in the consumer's brain so that even if they don't need it now, they might remember it when they do need something. I'm no marketing expert, but if you can inject that want into the consumer via advertising that's funny or artistic instead of lame and derivative, my TV-viewing ass is going to remember it a lot more easily when the time comes.

There are only three possible good outcomes for a commercial: be funny, be memorable, or be inspiring. There are good examples of ad campaigns that aren't particularly ostentatious, but are actually transcendent in how simple they are: Absolut vodka, for example, has basically given a borderline-shitty vodka worldwide recognition with an outstanding marketing campaign. The idea doesn't try too hard, but Absolut has built a really clean, simple iconography that they can put EVERYWHERE, particularly in print ads.

Maybe I take commercials more seriously than most people, but it pisses me off to see a terrible ad. Seriously, if an ad strikes me as particularly bad, I'll actually remember to avoid buying that product. Really, how hard is it to write something that will stick with people, even if it irritates them? This is part of why I want to get into advertising. Although of course, I never will, since you can be damn sure that everything innovative that has ever appeared on television has been fought tooth and nail since its conception by the people who run the industry. And I'm far too lazy to do anything about it.