Interesting basketball ads

As I am a basketball fan, I spend most of my spare time in playing and watching basketball through YouTube. Therefore, I paid attention to several basketball commercials during last two days. Stephen Curry has been sensation in NBA for last four years. He became MVP for two times in a row and one of them was nominated unanimously. Most importantly, he won 2015-2016 NBA championship. However, he blew 3-1 lead against Cleveland in last season. All the blames were on Curry and his shoes merchandise was in jeopardy. After the lost, Under Amour published the shoes “Stephen Curry 3”. Considering the media reaction and the situation, it was bad timing to publicize Curry’s shoes. However, Under Amour used that negative attention to make Ad with a headline “Now make that old”. The ad was basically saying that all the awards and compliments he had were old news but the loss in last final game was fresh, so he is going to make that (the loss) old news.

Continuing with basketball story. The best and saddest moment in the sports last year would be Kobe Bryant’s retirement. He announced to retire after playing season 2015-2016. It was a big news to everyone because Kobe Bryant has done so many things during his career of basketball. So, Nike made an advertisement where several athletes talk about Kobe Bryant. All of them were sponsored by that company. Some played basketball, soccer, football, golf, or tennis. However, it did not really matter for them to talk about how great Kobe Bryant was. In the ad, they start to describe Kobe and his greatness. The headline for this ad is “Love or Hate” and “Mamba day (4.13)”. A lot of people hated Kobe Bryant for being good and beating other teams. If you are not from L.A you must love him, but for others they have no reason to like him. That is the message of “Love or Hate”. The “Mamba day (4.13)” is the day of his last game (Black Mamba is his nickname). This ad shows respect to Kobe Bryant and the date of his last game. The reason why this ad gives positive effects to Nike, is because it brings attention to Nike products with Kobe Bryant’s name.

These two ads used the situation perfectly to increase the sale of the products. People will be more connected with these stories and tend to buy the related products as they want to be part of the story. Most of the sports ads use this strategy as they have a lot of stories and people are easily connected with sports.