A-League Advertising Blitz

[Dasher39]

Found this article in The Australian today regarding the upcoming A-League advertising blitz!

Soccer ads aim to net hip youth

August 04, 2005

"HOW many dudes can rock a show like this? Not many. If any."

It's not Up there Cazaly, but New Zealand rap artist Scribe's song Not many has been chosen as the anthem to sell Australian soccer to a new generation of fans in a $10million advertising push that launches on Monday night.

Twelve little-known stars of the Hyundai A-League, which kicks off on August 26, showcase their ball skills in a street art-inspired television commercial that cost more than $500,000 to make and was produced by Hollywood director Ridley Scott's production company.

Using the slogan "It's Football. But not as you know it", the ad shows players including Queensland Roar captain Chad Gibson writing the names of complex soccer skills - such as bicycle and scissor kicks - using a paint-covered ball, while performing them.

The commercial borrows from urban, youth-culture-focused soccer commercials run by brands such as Nike in recent years to showcase the expressiveness and skillfulness of the sport to the key audience of 16 to 24-year-olds.

"Getting this new football off the ground is about credibility and quality," Football Federation of Australia head of marketing and strategy Geoff Parmenter said.

"You could view this as a new product launch, but in our minds it's even more substantial than that. We're trying to unveil a new culture."

The 60-second commercial, created by ad agency Lowe Hunt, will roadblock every commercial TV network as well as broadcast partners pay-TV channel Fox Sports and Sky TV in New Zealand on Monday night, introducing the new national football competition to an audience of about four million people.

It follows a cinema, internet and outdoor teaser advertising campaign that uses a ball-shaped paint splotch alluding to the new commercial.

"We found a vehicle to show how skillful these players are - they're skillful on a world level - and then we got out of the way," Lowe Hunt creative director Adam Lance said.

Several million dollars will be spent on the launch phase, which also includes radio and print advertising, followed by related individual ads for each of the eight clubs, all of which have at least one player represented in the commercial.

About $12 million is being invested in the league by sponsors including Hyundai, Nike, Telstra, Coca-Cola and Qantas, and a marketing partnership with a national radio network is expected to be announced this week.

Previous national advertising campaigns for soccer have withered on the vine due to a lack of support and funding from former National Soccer League clubs focused on promoting themselves to their support base, but Parmenter said the A-League was providing advertising material that would help the new clubs, some of which existed previously, to market themselves locally.

"To the extent that nine of us are singing off the same hymn sheet with the same tune you can get one plus one to equal three quite easily," he said.

Mr Parmenter said families and older supporters as well as young players were part of the broad audience for the new football, which needed to make a clean break from the collapse of the former NSL, successive failed World Cup campaigns and ethnic soccer flare-ups that have eroded the sport's image.

"This is not a narrow youth focus but we feel as though that sort of youthful attitude can be quite aspirational for kids younger than that and their parents," he said.

Soccer claims to be the largest team participation sport in Australia, just ahead of cricket, with a high level of female involvement and many social competitions, but 70 per cent of registered players are aged 17 or younger.

However, the latest Sweeney Sports figures show cricket still ahead of soccer with 13 per cent of the population playing the sport to soccer's 11 per cent - which is nevertheless almost double the rate of Australian rules participation (6 per cent), rugby union (3 per cent) and rugby league (2 per cent).

The FFA is hoping that spikes in interest that have traditionally surrounded games played by the national side, broaden into more consistent support with the news in June that Australia has been accepted into the Asian Football Confederation.

The Socceroos will begin playing Asian Cup qualifiers from February next year and the top two club sides will qualify for the Asian Champions League.

 

[Ray Nolan]

Have seen the paint balls on the sides of buses here in Adelaide.

Gabbo is nearly here!