In less than a month, the most-watched sporting event on the planet will begin, the 2010 World Cup. But an associated competition is now well underway – brand sponsorship and advertising, specifically the rivalry between Adidas and Nike. Adidas is currently the biggest world cup brand, sponsoring major players and fully one-third of the teams going to South Africa. But Nike is not far behind, sponsoring some of the biggest names in the sport as well as their own teams. Worldwide, Adidas sells about $1.8 billion in soccer gear while Nike sells about $1.7 billion.

This week Nike launched their official World Cup campaign with a new three-minute video created by Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu (Babel, 21 Grams). Called “Write the Future”, it features soccer stars like Wayne Rooney, Franck Ribery, Cristiano Ronaldo, Landon Donovan, and Ronaldinho, as well as non-soccer stars such as Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer, and Homer Simpson.

Adidas, on the other hand, won the rights to be the overall World Cup official sponsor, so it will be interesting to see who wins this battle as Adidas counters Nike’s move.

Domus is a marketing and digital advertising agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Last month we we had a post titled Marketing Lessons from Games and Sports. In it we discussed the necessity of thinking through our marketing moves, including asking what will our competition – the other “player(s) – do in response?

Nike’s new Tiger Woods commercial featuring the voice of his late father (timed for the opening of the 2010 Masters) is another good case study for that post, but with a twist. In that post, we referenced the potential response of the the competition, but in today’s social media world, you and the competition aren’t the only players in the communications game. The rest of the world – customers and non-customers alike – are also players. So, it is just as important to consider what these other “players” will do.

As it turns out Nike put out an ad showing a silent Woods staring at the camera while the disembodied voice of his deceased father asks if he learned anything. Separate from the question as to whether this ad was effective in its direct communication, I wonder whether Nike thought through the next moves of the other players, specifically the universe of consumers. Immediately after the ad aired, in addition to negative comments throughout the internet, video parodies of it started appearing. Nike might say that they hoped for this (generating buzz), but I’m not so sure that they hoped for all of it; otherwise, why are they now making youtube pull the commercial parodies, invoking copyright infringement?

Below is an original posting of one of the parodies on youtube.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia offering advertising, public relations, digital, and social media marketing expertise in an integrated approach based on sound, classic principles of marketing. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.