My ears perked up as soon as I heard the piano riff from Jay-Z’s "Blueprint 2" in the background of this ad on TV this week. That made me pay attention to the rest of the clip, which fits two NFL players’ life stories into a tight little minute-long narrative. Pretty great work — check it out below. Turns out the spot was directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac), one of my favorite filmmakers. I’ve insisted on cranking up the volume and watching attentively every time this ad pops up on my screen.
Personally, this experience has made me want to do one of two things: 1) re-watch Zodiac (great movie!), and 2) re-listen to Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 2 (uneven album! but great title track!). You’ll note that neither of those things are buying Nike shoes, for a variety of reasons — sorry, Nike’s marketing department. But kudos for producing a really cool ad. It’s totally this non-football-fan’s second favorite football-related piece of recent pop culture. (Number one would be the new season of Friday Night Lights, of course.) How about you?
More on ads and sports:
Spike Jonze falls into a Gap ad
Ranking the best and worst NFL stadiums
Bruce Springsteen is playing the Super Bowl halftime show!
Stephen King’s SportsCenter ad
It’s a great ad and “Zodiac” IS a terrific movie.
It’s also strangely accurate since this year for the first time, Ladainian Tomlinson (the running back in the spot and one of the best for a long time) would TOTALLY get stuffed like that in real life.
Your post would be complete if you had mentioned that Jay Z sampled Ennio Morricone’s score.
Your post would be complete if you had mentioned that Jay Z sampled Ennio Morricone’s score.
Gotta love Troy Polamalu AND David Fincher!
Great ad – I noticed it because it really stood out among the crappy beer and car spots watching the NFL last weekend. Good choice of players, too.
Tony Polamalu is one of the players, who is the other? Not a football fan, so have not seen it – but it is a cool spot.
The players are Troy Polamalu (spelling?) and Ladanian Tomlinson (again, spelling?), for the Steelers and Chargers respectively. Thanks for telling me what the song is, I love this ad and had been wondering that for a while.
Wait… are you crediting the music for this Nike commercial to someone other than Ennio Morricone? The piece of music is from “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Ecstacy Of Gold”
Long before Jay-Z was in the business I am sure. Do give the right credit where it is due!
Thanks
Great commercial.
Thank you, CJ! I knew that the underlying track on this had to come from a spaghetti western. Thanks for supplying the name and title!
Awesome ad! It doesn’t make me want to buy Nike at all, but now I feel an urge to watch some football.
Love this ad! I’m a huge Steeler fan so it certainly helped that they used Troy. I get sooo sick of certain ads that they run during football season – you see them over and over (and football is the only programming that I don’t DVR). Nike often has great ads, and I won’t mind watching this one all season. Also, I definitely thought of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly when I heard the music.
the song is a remix by houdini
http://www.myspace.com/houdinimusic
a great band!!!
I’m not sure that Jay Z “sampled” Morricone directly, but either way, this song is definately Ecstacy of Gold (Good the Bad and the Ugly theme) which Morricone composed. If you like this, you should check out Yo-Yo Ma’s cover of Ecstacy of Gold, which is incredible.
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