This week I went to watch England vs Serbia in the Euro’s instead of going to Cannes. Both are heavily laden with vibes with the odd idea thrown in. In this issue we’re going to look at whether sports marketing is entirely vibes based, a little Goodby vs Wieden match up and what happens when a brand is associated with a negative vibe.
I’ll do a round up of Cannes Grand Prix winners to see whether vibes or ideas win that shoot out soon. So far, as predicted in the last post, the British Airways vibes are strong.
I first went to Cannes in 2005. My then, and now, partner Flo Heiss were taken there by Microsoft after winning an award sponsored by them. They put us in a helicopter from Nice to Cannes. We got out the helicopter as a porn star got in. I don’t remember much apart from burying FarFar’s Lion in the sand for a joke but then no one being able to find it. And going to a Y&R party at about 4am and being handed a full bottle of Moet upon entry. Not a mini, full size. About six of us left the party as the sun was rising and swam in the sea opposite the party, each holding our own bottle above the waves.
Agencies can’t afford that shit these days. Every inch of the beach has been bought up by media or tech. The vibe transformation is complete. I went last year. Mainly to DJ. I used to throw a street party with some friends called Balearic or Baloney as an antidote to the big beach parties. Last year the police shut us down. I’ve won Gold Lions and DJ’d to thousands in the street but the thing I am most proud of at Cannes is winning the YouTube Beach Volleyball competition. Goose vibes 😀
So this year I went to the Euro’s instead. Back in 2012 I wrote a piece about how Cannes and Fifa (the people that put on the World Cup, UEFA run the Euros but same vibe) were the same. TL:DR, both run by old con men, but the beauty of the con is you know you are being conned and still don’t care because for that brief moment the vibes are unbeatable.
Football, and sport in general, is a heavily vibes-based business. One more thing about Cannes is that the Stagwell stage seems to have been the hottest place to be last year and this. Because they draw athletes. As my friend Toby Daniels from On Discourse, who partner with Stagwell put it, “Sports are one of - please pardon the hyperbole - humanity’s strongest drivers of culture. A fan’s relationship to a team, athlete, or sport influences the brands they love, the habits they hold, and the money they spend. All of those behaviors cascade into different realms of the economy.”
Brian Morrissey made a similar remark in his Rebooting newsletter, ‘Sports are winning because they’re a throwback. They have cultural heft and are one of the last mass cultural events left. No matter what brands say to the ad tech people, they want to embed in culture.’
The connection between Sports and Culture is strong. When something is so entwined in culture it’s tempting to say you don’t need an idea for marketing. Indeed an idea might just get in the way of the vibe. You could make a case for teams and athletes having a brand, but I don’t think any franchise or team has ever had a platform idea. A feeling, a belief, certain standards, yes - a vibe basically. Sports advertising tends to reinforce a vibe, not create something new. Think of Rooney and Cantona ads in football, Jordan and Barkley ads in Basketball, Serena in Tennis.
Athletes main selling point is their vibe. Here is football writer Grace Dent in her excellent substack talking about Germany’s talismanic midfielder Toni Kroos : ‘He completed 101 of his 102 passes, which would be absolutely bonkers for just about any current player except him. I have no idea if he can run at this tournament, but he didn’t need to tonight, as Scotland let him vibe.’
I’m here for anyone using vibe as a verb.
Kroos’s Real Madrid teammate Jude Bellingsham, is the king of vibes right now. The latest adidas ‘Hey Jude’ spot tells the story of Jude making the sad country of England better. I was discussing it with my friend Brendan who runs Robin, a creative agency specialising in sports:
I do like the spot, you can’t help but like it. I don’t think there is an idea there. I’m not sure there needs to be. Actually the song is the idea. Jude scored at the match I went to. People sang the song. I can imagine a social media strategist excitedly claiming, ‘they’re singing our song from the ad!’ As I said about the BA ads last time I don’t think it’s lazy to use such an epic song. It’s an opportunity, an open goal, if you will? I imagine the toughest thing about this brief was the music rights. It was scored by musician Joseph Wilkinson. On his insta he says, ‘Never did I imagine I would do backing vocals for Sir Paul McCartney’. Happy for him.
Elsewhere, Jude is vibing with, Louis Vuitton, Lucozade and most notably Kim’s underwear brand Skims. (Inspired naming.) Underwear ads don’t tend to have an idea but should sports?
Historically sports have dealt more with vibes than ideas. ‘Just Do It’ is Just A Vibe. ‘Impossible is Nothing’, the same, as is the new Adidas line ‘You Got This’. It seems like ‘You Got This’ was introduced earlier this year. Most of the brand films are standard athlete portraits. There is one very funny moment where the Italian football team are drinking tea out of teacups that say, ‘It’s coming Rome’. There is one basketball spot with Anthony Edwards where he tries to make a 20 foot hoop. Here we see a germ of an idea, or a theme, the best players can handle pressure. You could argue the Hey Jude spot explores that but it’s not overt. Let’s see if the pressure idea goes the distance.
Do any sports campaigns actually have campaign ideas? One of my favourite campaigns was for Nike Skateboarding back in 1998. Nearly thirty years later I still remember the lines, ‘ I used to run, when I WAS EIGHT!’ and the cop shouting at the tennis players, ‘Couple of Monkeys!’. The idea and line was, ‘What if we treated all athletes like Skateboarders?’ It’s one of the only examples of a strategic line in sports that I can remember. What also sets these spots apart is the dialogue. Most sports ads don’t have dialogue. Maybe because athlete’s can’t act. Take a look at one of Tarsem’s best Nike spots, Good vs Evil for epic football and atrocious acting.
That skateboarding campaign was done by Goodby. Not Wieden & Kennedy. I’m not sure how much more work Goodby did for Nike but it wasn’t much. Were they penalised for attempting a strategy when they should have just concentrated on vibes? Were they trying to put dialogue in when it should just be stars vibing? Wieden’s Wayne Rooney poster shows what you can do when you ditch strategy and dialogue and max out on vibes.
Too simple to say Goodby = Ideas, Wieden = Vibes? Goodby’s mega hit was the platform idea Got Milk? Not sure I can think of a big platform idea from Wiedens. Which is not to say they don’t do great work, of course they do, they make epic work, but Hate Something, Change Something, although part of The Power of Dreams wins on vibes more than strategy.
For a time, Droga devised a new strategic direction for Puma. They started making ads and experiences about social sports, night time athletes rather than, you know, real athletes. Part of this was the excellent PT3 Table Tennis tournaments held in New York. This was social sport, hipster sport. A different vibe. This strategy worked until it didn’t. It was just too narrow. Prizes at the tournaments started with really fucking nice Puma bikes and then dwindled each year ending with a $100 voucher. I know what the prizes were because my team won the tournament each year. Volleyball, Table Tennis. What can I say? Like Johnny Barnes I take sport seriously!
Agencies want to make their mark. Maybe it’s seen as more valuable to create a new strategic platform for a brand rather than just play the hits?
As more and more work goes in house it’s tempting to think that would mean a reduction in ideas. But in the last few years I’ve seen some great ideas from sports in house teams. Gabriel Jesus as Christ The Redeemer. An even better idea from AS Roma. When they announce signing a new player they also highlight missing people. That’s not just an idea, that’s an unexpected long term idea with a cause. Shit like that win’s stuff at Cannes.
And then recently I saw a really nice simple idea from the Boston Celtics. They somehow merged a load of footage together to make it seem like a whole game was played in one half. Take a look, it’s really simple, but so effective. All of these are not short on vibes but also have ideas.
The upshot? Vibe + Idea = Win.
We mostly talk about positive vibes associated with brands. But how about negative vibes? Fred Perry had to physically distance themselves from the Proud Boys and other fascist vibes a few years back. Fred Perry is a very proper English Tennis brand founded in 1952, inexorably linked to the genteel vibe of Wimbledon, yet throughout history it has been co-opted by edgy cultural forces, often with completely contradicting vibes. Racist skinheads wore the polo shirts but so did the gay community. Amy Winehouse vibed with Fred Perry just before The Proud Boys. The Proud Boys was the first time Fred Perry stepped in to cancel a vibe, running ads featuring diverse models.
Football hooligans also vibe with Fred Perry. One of the German police officers in charge of undercover hooligan containment at the Euro’s literally said he looks for men ‘wearing Fred Perry shirts’. How would you feel about that as a brand? Stone Island is another brand that is beloved by football hooligans. In the 80’s Liverpool Football Club were the dominant English side. They played many European ties against Italian clubs. English fans would travel to Italy and shoplift huge quantities of Italian sports brands. Hence the rise of Stone Island, CP Company, Fila, Ellesse, Sergio Tachini and Diadora in 80’s England. Liverpool were banned from Europe after the Heisel disaster but those brands, the Italian vibe, became enshrined in UK culture for a decade, emerging again recently. Stone Island was always around, a favourite of hooligans and geezers but then exploded again after Drake got the badge in everywhere.
I just spent two days in Germany, sitting behind and queuing behind what I call doublenecks, basically Guy Ritchie geezer characters. One doubleneck pushed in front of everyone in the line for airport security. When this was pointed out he simply replied, ‘I don’t give a fuck’. Vibes. It’’s fascinating to see the connection between a vibe and a brand. How does Stone Island et all walk that tightrope?. They want the sales, they don’t want the aggro. Criticise the aggro, lose the sales. I’d love to know what a marketing meeting at Stone Island looks like. Any ideas?
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back with a Cannes Grand Prix Vibes vs Idea post soon.
Toodles, James
Interesting vibes quote from Manolo Arroyo, Global CMO at Coca-Cola from Cannes
“The USP [unique selling point] construct doesn't apply to us. What we sell is an emotion, a series of emotions and feelings.”
Can't decide if that's very silly or enlightened.
That was a great read James.
In terms of sports teams having a true idea, one of the best I've seen is Toronto Raptors' "We The North" from Sid Lee.
There's a solid strategy to it (unite the whole of Canada behind its only NBA team, against all the haters in the US who are always ridiculing Canadian basketball), the work and activation of the idea was great, it completely took hold as an idea and line with the fans and it is very, very vibes.