Nike recently released their latest ad (perhaps even their best) and in ‘Winner Stays’ Nike have yet another top-quality pre-World Cup ad in their catalogue. As many of us look ahead to Brazil we can trust the American giant to mark out the first staging post, as ever delivered by their agency of the last 30 years, Wieden + Kennedy.

Nike's World Cup ads have gone from being standard campaigns, to a cultural phenomenon in under two decades.


‘Winner Stays’ is the ultimate spin on the Sunday kickaround, as kids transform into their heroes, a comic book character and even a postman. Unbelievable skills are on display and David Luiz continues his metamorphosis from unpredictable centre back to comedy posterboy (that’s still very good at football), while Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar take centre stage. The brand mastery continues, neatly sidestepping Adidas by including players such as Pique and Iniesta in their Nike-made club kits rather than their country’s Adidas kits.



Back to the start though… In 1994 Nike suddenly found itself vaguely interested in football, thanks to the US hosting the world cup. Lacking the drama and grandeur of campaigns to come, ’94 settled for a simple but effective gimmick of footballers on billboards kicking it to one another across the continents.



With the detour of a surreal good vs evil match in a 1996 ad, by World Cup ’98 in France Nike was backing the winners of the previous tournament, Brazil, to the hilt. Where it not for a horrendously lethargic final performance and the magic of Zinedine Zidane, they might have been on to something too. As it was they had an airport football run-around loosely pitting the Brazilian stars against security guards in this classic ad. Bonus points for picking out the most expensive player ever, at the time, Denilson (remember him?).



For 2002, Nike was in full on classic-mode, delivering a high intensity cage match, in a underground-style football tournament. It even has Elvis as the sound track. The 4 minute spot featured almost every major footballer of the day and tournament winner Thierry Henry show-cased his cunning way before he’d ever taken a free kick when no-one was ready.



With battle-lines clearly drawn with Adidas, World Cup ’06 was in that brand’s host country. Nike went all guns blazing with a whole Joga Bonito campaign, making use of some of the first mainstream viral video tactics and pinning itself on its latest Brazilian star, Ronaldinho.



For 2010, the World Cup was back on neutral ground and Nike returned with an extended ad under the theme ‘Write Your Future’. For once Cantona didn’t get the acting gig, and a three-pronged attack of Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ronaldinho took centre stage. Along with Homer Simpson. The video was a massive hit, but the same can't be said for its stars, who all left the world cup earlier than expected, apart from Ronaldinho who didn't make it there at all. What's worse was that Adidas-wearing Spain made it 2 trophies in a row.




All of this without ever once being an official sponsor for the world cup and without Lionel Messi, (jewel in the Adidas crown) in sight. Proving that if you can make an unofficial ad and still steal all the attention while adding to the vault of great ads out there; Just do it.