The five-minute advertising epic opens with Oscar-nominated actor Chalamet trying to put together the greatest street soccer team ever, starting with Team USA star Trinity Rodman, Jude Bellingham of Real Madrid and Team England, and Spanish teen sensation Lamine Yamal of FC Barcelona.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Turns out there is a legendary street soccer crew that hasn\u2019t been beaten since 1996, and Chalamet is determined to end their streak. We get a peek into the mysterious street ballers\u2019 past, as they upset \u201990s stars including David Beckham and Zinedine \u201cZizou\u201d Zidane. Bad Bunny and Lionel Messi are there to take in the action.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lola USA\u2014a new Omnicom franken-agency forged in April when the holding company combined<\/a> 180 and Adam&EveDDB New York\u2014created the spot. The magic trick it pulls off is how it manages to take a less-than unique story device (famous players, unexpected game, etc.), and give it a new spin in a way that lives up to both the hype and<\/em> the occasion of the world\u2019s biggest sporting event.\u00a0<\/p>\n It might just be the best World Cup ad from the Three Stripes in 20 years. <\/p>\n Like I said, the fantasy draft football squad device is nothing new to mark a World Cup. In 2002, Nike put Manchester United legend Eric Cantona<\/a> in the Chalamet role, recruiting star players to participate in a secret street ball tournament on a container ship in the middle of the ocean. The swoosh was back at it again in 2014 with \u201cWinner Stays,\u201d in which teens pick teams from a ridiculously fun player pool.<\/p>\n Adidas itself helped originate this concept back in 2006 with \u201cJos\u00e9,\u201d in which two kids\u2014on a remarkably familiar apartment-lined street pitch\u2014pick their ultimate teams, with the help of impressive VFX to bring back luminaries of the past like German legend Franz Beckenbauer and French star Michel Platini.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since then, Adidas\u2019s World Cup advertising has been a bit of a mixed bag of concepts. <\/p>\n Its \u201cCantina\u201d spot for the 2010 World Cup is easily the most original, somehow seamlessly mixing soccer stars with Daft Punk, Snoop Dogg, Jay Baruchel, and the Gallagher brothers of Oasis fame into the Mos Eisley cantina scenes from the original Star Wars<\/em>.<\/p>\n Epic. <\/p>\n In 2014, \u201cThe Dream<\/a>,\u201d directed by City of God<\/em>\u2019s Fernando Meirelles, starred Lionel Messi with the requisite laundry list of Adidas-sponsored stars from various countries, including Dani Alves, Luis Su\u00e1rez, Robin van Persie, Bastian Schweinsteiger, and Xavier \u201cXavi\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez. It\u2019s a pretty intense, dramatized look at the training and pressure on these stars. No laughs here.<\/p>\n For the 2018 tournament, the spot was called \u201cCreativity Is the Answer<\/a>,\u201d which sounds like the name of a panel at an advertising conference. This was a mishmash of soccer stars (including Messi, France\u2019s Paul Pogba, and Egypt\u2019s Mo Salah) with the likes of supermodel Karlie Kloss and multihyphenate artist Pharrell Williams in what looks like a mix between a concert and a soccer-themed bloodsport kumite. Frankly, it\u2019s a bit of a hot mess\u2014an insanely expensive hot mess.\u00a0<\/p>\n Four years later, in 2022, the brand simplified and found its sense of humor with \u201cFamily Reunion.\u201d Narrated by award-winning artist Stormzy, this spot imagined a collection of football stars (including, once again, Messi, along with Bellingham, Karim Benzema, and Son Heung-Min) as a goofy group of housemates (or cousins?) meeting up to go enjoy the tournament like some elite soccer social club.<\/p>\n If you combine the concept of \u201cJos\u00e9\u201d with the goofiness of \u201cFamily Reunion\u201d and the ambition of \u201cCantina,\u201d you land on \u201cBackyard Legends.\u201d<\/p>\n Here Chalamet is at his Marty<\/em> Supreme<\/em>-esque manic best, and the footballers are also believably natural and funny. (If you\u2019ve ever seen Messi\u2019s work for Michelob Ultra or Lay\u2019s, you know what an accomplishment that is.) Plus, the VFX-generated flashback looks of players like Zidane and Del Piero, not to mention Buzzcut Beckham, Blond Beckham, and Mohawk Beckham, are funny enough to ignore the whiff of uncanny AI.<\/p>\n As a celebrity star, and pseudo-avatar for everyday fans, Chalamet nails it. He\u2019s no celebrity mercenary\u2014he\u2019s a real soccer fan. Anyone who cheers for Ligue 1 side Saint-\u00c9tienne is no run-of-the-mill bandwagon rider. <\/p>\n He also recently posted a social video<\/a> supporting the girls\u2019 softball team at his former high school, NYC\u2019s LaGuardia (on a soccer field for some reason?), while rocking a Manhattan Kickers jacket (that\u2019s the youth club he once played for<\/a>, with whom he even competed against Liverpool\u2019s Joe Gomez). As Men in Blazers founder Roger Bennett has said, he\u2019s America\u2019s ultimate football hipster<\/a>, and here he truly earns that title.\u00a0<\/p>\n The world-building and lore that Adidas manages to craft in five minutes is impressive, as is how genuinely fun it feels for everyone involved, not just the viewers. But perhaps its best move of all is that it ends before the supposed epic game even starts. We get a callback to 2006\u2019s \u201cJos\u00e9\u201d with Auntie up in the apartment supplying the ball, and just as it\u2019s all about to kick off, \u201cFin<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s hoping the brand leaves us excited and wanting more. <\/p>\n The 2026 World Cup will generate an extra $10.5 billion in global ad spending in the second quarter of this year, a gain of 1.1% compared to non-tournament years, according to a projection<\/a> by marketing research firm WARC Media. That\u2019s all just the cost of buying ad space, and doesn\u2019t even account for the cost of actually making the ads and other brand work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Much like they do for the Super Bowl, World Cup advertisers often appear panicked by all that extra spending and attention, making ads that reek of more money than sense. Exhibit A for this year\u2019s World Cup is Lay\u2019s \u201cMost Epic Watch Party<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n For \u201cBackyard Legends,\u201d it\u2019s clear that Adidas has put a ton of cash on the screen, but the story\u2019s clarity, characters\u2019 energy, and brand\u2019s creativity to evolve a familiar concept makes it a shrewd investment.\u00a0<\/p>\nHistorical precedent<\/h2>\n
Adidas’s best ever?<\/h2>\n
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