Monday, August 11, 2008

Don't You Put Me On The Backburner

Hopefully by now everyone has seen the dramatic finish to the men's 400 freestyle relay. (If you haven't, click on 'dramatic finish' in the previous sentence and be blessed) As exciting and quite frankly, satisfying as the finish to that race was, I must admit, this commercial by Nike comes a close second in the 'goosebump-enducing' category:


Any time you can incorporate a Killers song into an Olympic montage, I'm all for it.

However, any time you combine Marvin Gaye singing the Star-Spangled Banner with the US Men's Basketball team, (Sorry, they're not the Dream Team, that ship sailed in 1992) you have something incredibly incredible:



When you throw these two Nike Olympic commercials into the mix, it begs the question-Does Nike make the greatest commercials of all-time? In my opinion, they absolutely do, and not just because of these two. Besides these, there are numerous classics in the 'Jordan' series, the 'LeBron's,' the 'My Better is Better Than Your Better,' the old squeaky-shoes commercials, and many other I'm sure I'm missing. Feel free to chime in with opinions about what you think the best sports commercials are, I'd love to hear them.
Side Note: The Marvin Gaye footage was taken from his performance before the 1983 NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles. Here is an interesting article about the performance, which happened a year before his untimely death.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

dude....great post. grrrreat clips!

Justin said...

The first spot needs much, much less Rooney and Ronaldo. Other than that, fantastic work by Nike.

Personally, I'm a fan of the Nike/Guy Ritchie commercial that premiered during last year's Champions League matches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc3PZ3Im5aQ

Plus, the song in the commercial is from a band called "The Eagles of Death Metal". I have no idea what that means, but nonetheless I respect it.