Ronaldo, Rooney, Neymar ‘Risk Everything’ in new football ad

This is probably the point where you drop everything you’re doing and watch Nike Football’s latest spot ‘Risk Everything’.

If you thought Wieden + Kennedy had reached the peak of great advertising with their 2010 World Cup spot ‘ Write the Future’, they sure have used the past four years planning how to outwit you best, and succeeded. ‘Risk Everything’ has a ridiculously simple insight – the tremendous pressure sportspeople go through and how they risk everything to be the best. Yes, that’s about it. The commercial has football’s favourite men Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Neymar all in a parallel narrative. Through visuals and voiceovers, we see that all around them is pressure; the pressure to perform, pressure from the media, the paparazzi, fans and critics. [caption id=“attachment_1460801” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Has Nike kick-started brands’ advertising for the Football World Cup 2014?[/caption] Rooney is being told to ‘perform on the biggest stage yet’, while someone else questions whether Neymar can live up to the hallowed no. 10 jersey. Elsewhere, Ronaldo is being praised to high heavens for helping Portugal win the previous night’s match, praise that one knows will just take one bad performance to come crumbling down. This, just as he passes a giant ad featuring his photo and the words, ‘Portugal is watching’. All three men are stone-faced; they react to neither the good nor the bad criticism. Add to that, the background score is nothing but the sound of loud, urgent footsteps, reminiscent of a one-man march. It lends itself seamlessly to the urgency and the tension the commercial is thick with. Towards the end, we see the men getting ready to go out on the field, with determined faces. The rhythm of their footsteps exactly matches the one in the background score. Finally, they begin running to the field. Cut to the end slate that says, “Pressure shapes legends. Risk everything.” This surely seems like a taste-of-things-to-come-this-upcoming-Football-World-Cup spot, what with leading footballers from three different countries sharing airtime in one ad. And if this really is the taste of what’s to come, it’s going to be exciting to watch each brand try to bring out the best from its arsenal. Oops, did we just say ‘arsenal’?