Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

I absolutely love Nike’s new banner campaign for the new Lebron V shoe which is featured, among others, on ESPN’s NBA website. Here’s a screencap (click for full size):

As you can probably tell, there’s a live video feed for two different playgrounds: one in Atlanta and one in Oakland. You get to watch normal playground ballers play in real time(ish), the shoe and Nike’s brand presence is sort of on the side. But they’re definitely there. As you roll your mouse on the banner, a text appears that states that “And right now, all you’re doing is watching them play.” The message is clear: go out and play, which is pretty much what Nike is all about. I think I watched the video feed for a good 10 minutes, that’s a lot of brand exposure for one person. The addition of specific locations and “real” people add a lot of authenticity to the campaign.

We’ve been discussing the subject of brand presence on the Web with Ville quite a lot lately. I personally feel (we both feel, I guess) that a brand needs to work as a sort of lens or kaleidoscope even for information and content on the web, filtering anything the user might be looking for through the brand’s personality. Not quite working as a feedjockey (at least not yet, the idea is very enticing to me and I guess that some individuals such as Seth Godin who filter information could be considered as “brands”), but a filter nonetheless. You can see this type of behavior in the better web campaigns, Facebook apps or widgets.

And I guess it’s nice to see that banner ads are not dead, just lacking innovation. But that goes for any medium, I guess.

UPDATE: as it turns out, it’s not a video feed, just some looping video. But they do change the videos so that it seems to create an illusion of time changing. Too bad, had me fooled. But most of my points still stand =)