💡 nutmeg fc #1
Today: (Some of) the best creative ideas from the football industry.
A good creative idea is like a good nutmeg. It has that ability to solve problems effectively, but it also does it in a surprising, unexpected and beautiful way.
Here are some of the most interesting creative ideas I've come across this past week and, celebrating Manchester City's first Champions League win, they are introduced by this wonderful video of Messi nutmegging James Milner (and Pep's reaction):
120 years of Atleti (Atlético de Madrid).
Virtually every football club takes on the characteristic of fighting for what they want as their own, which is quite logical.
But I can't think of any club that has been able to put it into words as well as Atlético de Madrid. You only need to look at some of the slogans they have created:
Another way of understanding life
Never stop believing
Because they fight like brothers
If you believe and work hard, you can do it
To this list, we can now add the closing phrase of the club's 120th anniversary spot, which gives a historical perspective to the idea that this is a team that fights to get what it wants. Whoever it bothers.
The content recreates (or imagines) the moment when the members of Athletic Bilbao's Madrid branch decide to become independent and go their own way.
I like the idea itself, and it's well produced, but it's the closing phrase that gives it the special touch.
Reimagined Match (Banco Pichincha).
Ecuador's Banco Pichincha decided to take advantage of the popularity of art created with artificial intelligence to reimagine a match of one of the football clubs it sponsors (Liga de Quito) with images generated from the narration of the same match.
It is true that in recent months we have seen hundreds, if not thousands of AI creations. From the Avengers as Vikings to the Pope dressed in Gucci. But what is already normal for those of us who follow what is happening in the underworlds of creativity and technology can still be new and surprising for a wider audience. It's just a matter of putting it in the right context.
With this in mind, Banco Pichincha is seizing the moment to overcome one of the biggest challenges facing those of us in the creative world: to arouse the curiosity of the target audience. According to the data shared in the videocase, the action was seen by more than one million people, which, in a country of 17 million inhabitants, is not bad at all.
900 minutes for equality (Corona).
Megan Rapinoe says that what women's football needs most is visibility.
And this is what Mexican beer Corona sought to achieve when it sponsored a women's football match that lasted 900 minutes, from 8am to 11pm.
Why?
Simple. Because in Mexico, women footballers earn ten times less than men and therefore have to play ten times more in order to achieve equality.
The idea works on many levels. It has the hook to attract attention and become news and the parallel with playing time helps to remind us of the wage gap very easily.
One can only hope that Corona pays the same for its sponsorship in women's football as it does in men's football.
We call it giglio, but it's our DNA (ACF Fiorentina)
With all the shirts that are launched every year, it's normal that they start to repeat themselves or to look too similar. That's why it's so refreshing to find, from time to time, a design that has a thought behind it that goes beyond aesthetics.
For the new Fiorentina shirt, Kappa could have put diagonal stripes in a different shade of purple and everyone would have been happy, but they went further.
They turned the lily, a symbol of the city and the club (it is the red flower on the crest) into their DNA. And with these lily-formed DNA strands they created the weave of the shirt.
In addition, they added a detail with a lot of emotional value that, for some reason, was omitted from the promotional video. On the inside of the collar there are thirteen lilies. Twelve in white to represent their supporters (player n°12) and the number 13 is red and represents Davide Astori, the footballer who died in 2018 and wore that shirt number.
The presentation video has a 90s look, which I don't quite understand, but it reminds me of Batistuta and that's cool.
EA Sports .swoosh (Nike + EA Sports)
This is not really a creative idea, but I chose to include it because of the creative potential of the announcement.
Ever since the NFT explosion, I've been eager to see what this technology promises to deliver, but so far, it hasn't gone beyond functional applications and collectible digital art.
Then one day came the announcement of a partnership between EA Sports and Nike.
Through the .swoosh platform, Nike says it will deliver a more immersive and customisable experience across the EA Sports ecosystem.
They don't really explain what it is, but they do hint that it will be something limited and not as universal as the metaverse they've been promising us (which is still a long way off due to the programming and intellectual property conflicts that exist).
So the news is not so good. But the fact that two giants like EA Sports and Nike have teamed up to start creating something together seems to me a big step and a good reason to start getting excited.
Or maybe that's just me.