In celebration of this Sunday's World Cup final, we've put together our picks for the 10 best soccer commercials we've ever seen. Perhaps not surprisingly, the list is dominated by Nike (and Wieden + Kennedy), with Adidas's soccer spots often seeming to fall a bit short. We left off most of the fluffy stuff (like every Pepsi soccer spot ever done) in favor of the meat and potatoes. The choice for No. 1 is contentious, naturally, so let us know your feelings in the comments section here. That's also where you can berate us for the spots we left out.

10. Nike Shox, "Streaker" (Wieden + Kennedy, 2003)

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This Frank Budgen-directed spot remains advertising's most amusing celebration of the sports world's free-spirited exhibitionists. (It hardly mattered that it advertised running shoes, not soccer cleats.) Filmed in December 2002 at Millwall's pitch in London, it starred 32-year-old Mark Bowden in the title role, along with 300 extras. Bowden reportedly distinguished himself during the shoot by screaming with pain in the chilly weather. He later said: "I think I look pretty good in it, actually, but any man will tell you what happens when it's really cold."

9. Nike, "Secret Tournament" (Wieden + Kennedy, 2002)

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Created for the 2002 World Cup, this campaign (which included the three-minute spot above) imagined a secret three-on-three, first-goal-wins soccer tournament held on a container ship, featuring 24 of the world's best players and refereed by former Manchester United legend Eric Cantona (seen above). It doesn't get much cooler than eight mini dream teams competing in a cage match, and director Terry Gilliam brought the concept to life with style. The campaign included 3-D gaming, downloadable posters and perhaps most important, the catch remixed version of Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation."

8. Gatorade, "The Road" (Element 79 Partners, 2006)

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A wonderful patriotic spot from Gatorade for the 2006 World Cup featuring gritty footage from the U.S. team's journey to the tournament set to the baseball standard "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Sadly, the team's journey out of that tournament was a whole lot quicker.

7. Adidas - Messi (Impossible Is Nothing) (180 Amsterdam, 2007)

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Plenty of athletes have starred in the "Impossible is nothing" campaign. Few have faced the kind of genuine physical obstacles to success that Lionel Messi has. All Messi did was overcome his struggles to become the best players in the world. A triumph of storytelling for Adidas, whose action soccer spots tend to fall short.

6. Nike, "Ronaldinho R10 Crossbar" (Framfab Denmark, 2005)

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One of the truly great "Is it real or fake?" viral commercials of our time, this spot showed Ronaldinho hitting the crossbar four times in a row from 20 yards away. The Brazilian star might not be quite that skillful, but the commercial—which aired online first, and was then screened in public places—itself was masterful. It ended up winning a gold Lion in Cyber and a silver Lion in Film at Cannes in 2006.

5. Carlsberg, "Pub Team" (Saatchi & Saatchi, 2006)

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Most soccer spots celebrate the speed and power of youth. This one headed brilliantly in the opposite direction. It showed a Sunday pub team that happens to include some of England greatest-ever players—Peter Shilton, Des Walker, Bryan Robson, Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddle, Peter Beardsley, Peter Reid, Terry Butcher, Alan Ball, Jack Charlton and Bobby Charlton, with the late Sir Bobby Robson as the manager. The run-of-the-mill premise—that if Carlsberg ran a pub team, it would be the best in the world—is elevated by the spot's aging stars, who bring the sport gloriously down to earth by playing, long past their prime, for love of the game.

4. Nike, "Airport" (Wieden + Kennedy, 1998)

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The Brazilian team passes the time in an airport by playing a jubilant pickup game in the spot, directed by John Woo for the 1998 World Cup. Features a comical appearance by Eric Cantona (as the passenger on the airplane) and a brilliant ending, with Ronaldo just falling short of glory. That turned out to be prophetic, as Brazil lost to France in the final that year.

3. Nike, "Good vs. Evil" (Wieden + Kennedy, 1996)

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Created for the Euro 96 tournament, this epic spot featured a team of European all-stars against a team of horrendous evil monsters. At first, the humans get knocked around, but soon, of course, they begin to run rings around their otherworldy opponents—and this time, the ending is emphatic, with Eric Cantona blasting a free kick right through the midsection of the evil winged monster goalie. The spot was so good, it was banned from Danish cinemas and criticized by FIFA and the International Olympic Committee.

2. Nike, "Take It to the Next Level" (72andSunny, 2008)

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Guy Ritchie directed this manic masterpiece for Euro 2008, in which we get a dizzying first-person view of a young player recruited to play at London club Arsenal and then for the Dutch national team. Includes blood, vomit, the signing of breasts, lots of superstars and some remarkable camerawork that captures the pace and fury of a match at the top level. And, of course, showing all this from the viewer's perspective literally embodies the fantasy of every young boy in Europe—to rise through the ranks and become a global soccer star.

1. Nike, "Write the Future" (Wieden + Kennedy, 2010)

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Yes, this year's spot outdid them all—a cinematic marvel executed from a fun and flexible premise. Add in some inspired cameos (Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer, Homer Simpson), and director Alejandro Iñárritu's three-minute extravaganza had just about everything—including, it turned out, an unexpected ability to put a hex on its featured players, most of whom left the 2010 World Cup early (or, like Ronaldinho, never made it in the first place). Whether the ad was actually cursed, there's no denying it was half-obsessed with the fear of failure—and maybe it just got into the players heads. They'll want to write a different future next time—while Wieden and Nike will just want to keep a good thing going.

via : http://www.adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/top-10-soccer-commercials-ever-made.html

Ian Spector is the creator of Chuck Norris Facts. His latest book, Chuck Norris Cannot Be Stopped: 400 All-New Facts About the Man Who Knows Neither Fear Nor Mercy is now in bookstores everywhere. He is currently working on two startups and provides web strategy consulting services. Follow him on Twitter.

There’s a good chance that you’ve come across the word “meme” at some point or another in the past few years. It’s an arcane academic concept but at the same time it’s also one of those things that you can identify, but can’t describe easily. Richard Dawkins coined the phrase in an effort to help explain cultural evolution in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, where it’s defined as a shared element intended to be passed around within a culture, a societal analog to a gene. Everything from Tamagotchis to “That’s what she said” count as memes. On the Internet (), memes are more visible than ever before, and what’s more, they’re also serious business.

Now, even though it may not be immediately apparent, there are a number of universal qualities that all successful viral memes have in common.

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1. Content is Everything

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On the Internet, content is everything. It’s what will make or break a site. Why would anyone want to go to a website if there’s nothing interesting or entertaining to see? Visitors will flock to your creation so long as you consistently feed users good content that’s appropriately presented and packaged.

There are two major types of content: great original content (Stuff White People Like, The Landlord from Funny Or Die) and curated, user-generated content (Regretsy, FAILblog).

This may read like a page from the Book of ‘Duh’, but play to your strengths. For instance, if you’re not a fan of writing a whole lot, don’t start a long-form, text-heavy blog, and stick to editing incoming user-generated content.

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2. Simplicity

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“Going viral necessitates a universal understanding of the joke,” says Lauren Leto, co-founder of Texts from Last Night. “There’s a reason commentary on quantum physics doesn’t pull the attention of the masses, but a joke about a cat stuck in a box does – because it’s a quick laugh. The easier to digest, the more people will forward the content around.”

Beyond the content, your site should be simple to interact with as well. We all know that every type of person is on the web now, so by designing a simple, elegant, and intuitive site for users, as well as administrators, may save you a lot of headaches down the road.

Sometimes you don’t even need to build something fancy and custom yourself. This Is Why You’re Fat runs off of Tumblr (), which is a great platform for testing out whether or not the public will eat up your idea, and also has integrated sharing features which is helpful for growth. Depending on what your project is, you may not need to expand beyond it, but if you do, the next step up would be a service like Wordpress (), which affords the administrator more customized options. You can always build your own site, but that can often be time and cash-intensive.

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3. Emote

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The brain is very good at making associations. If your content is able to get people to respond emotionally, get people to laugh and enjoy themselves, you’re gold. That emotional connection serves as a sort of glue, binding the association between your content or site and enjoyment and with each exposure to entertaining, funny, or otherwise emotionally provocative content, that association between “your site” and “totally amazing” becomes stronger and stronger.

Here’s a quick case study: According to my network of unnamed spies, there are two groups of people who seem to be drawn to LOLCats. The first are people who just find it funny. The other group is made up of the passionate folks perhaps better known as “crazy cat ladies.” Their overwhelming love of cats drives them to spend time on the site as well as to spend money on the books that are available now as well. Think about that.

One of the biggest emotional hooks is empathy, which is where the success from sites like Awkward Family Photos and Shit My Dad Says come from. We’ve all got our own awkward family portraits, and we’ve all heard our parents say ridiculous things. White people will laugh at themselves reading Stuff White People Like, while non-white people will gladly laugh at the ironically accurate absurdity of “the definitive guide to the unique tastes of millions.” Note how race and family are some big-picture concepts. There’s lots of potential material in those spaces to play with, which can get users to respond to easily.

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4. Own Your Space

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What do sites like Texts from Last Night, Urban Dictionary, My Mom is a Fob, and FML () have in common? They’re all masters of their own space.

They’re original concepts unattached to any other properties, and by virtue of that, their owners can do things like make T-shirts, produce iPhone and iPad apps, and even develop TV shows (Shit My Dad Says landed a TV deal with CBS not too long ago and its slated to star William Shatner).

Then there are a those other sites that are inherently related to some third party “black box.” Sometimes that third party has no problem with what you’re doing (Remember Rick Astley Rickrolling the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?), sometimes they do. Avoid any potential messes by working on something completely unique and independent.

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5. Share It

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As with all things on the ever-growing social web, memes live and die by the ability to share content. If your content isn’t bite-sized and isn’t surrounded by some controls to share: Like, Tweet, Stumble, Digg (), or something else, you’re doing something wrong.

“Your content should be instantly identifiable no matter where it ends up on the web,” says Ben Bator, co-founder of Texts From Last Night. “Humorous material is meant to be shared, so don’t limit the possibilities.”

My personal favorite sharing control is the “share by e-mail” function found on ICanHasCheezburger. Remember how crazy cat ladies love that stuff? Guess what else they love to do – that’s right, forward everyone they know those pictures, so why not have that right on the site? Brilliant, though unfortunate for the rest of us.

If you’re using a blogging service like Wordpress or Tumblr, make sure that that sharing via third party services (Facebook (), Twitter ()) as well as controls like AddThis () are enabled.

At the launch of your project, you should also make sure that there are appropriate avenues for discussion, sharing, and fandom on third party services. Get yourself a Facebook Fan page, add certain pages to Stumble Upon, register appropriate Twitter handles, and popularize the hashtags you want to use. Being in control of your content outside of your site is important.

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6. Protect Your Content

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Because you’re working on the Internet, there’s a good chance that your content will spill out everywhere besides your website. Set Google Alerts for your site’s name and even for popular content (if it’s text-based) so that you can be alerted to copycat websites or apps.

You should have an attorney send any copycat sites cease and desist notices immediately to the owners of those sites. You don’t absolutely need an attorney to do this for you, but you’re usually guaranteed better results. Most copycats will stop immediately once they hear from you if you’ve done the job properly.

In addition, you should protect yourself from potentially angry users by creating a bulletproof “Terms of Service” page. “[It] should be the first page you complete. Make your intentions clear, otherwise you will just piss off your users (and possibly lose out on a book deal),” says Bator. Unless you’re an oracle, it’s unlikely that you know what direction your site will follow as it grows.

“Launch with a broad but legit terms of service and take it from there,” suggests Jessica Amason, co-creator of This Is Why You’re Fat and Viral Media Editor at BuzzFeed.

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7. Listen

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The only reason Chuck Norris Facts exist is because I asked the visitors to my site what they wanted to see. I had started my site with “Vin Diesel Facts” and after getting a few million hits and some mentions in the press, I put up a poll to ask visitors who the site should include next. The rest is history.

Don’t necessarily crowdsource your major decisions to your users since you probably don’t know or trust them that well, but it’s just as much their site as it is yours to a certain extent. Users/members ought to have a say in things, if only to let you know if you’re going in the right direction.

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8. Don’t Force It

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There’s a good chance you’ve heard this phrase in one context or another. Most memes seem to start and grow organically — their successes are a result of good content, stellar execution, and everything else previously mentioned. It’s really hard to work backwards.

Some people in the meme-machine world will actually start a large number of sites per year, expect most of them to fail, and just support the ones that take off. Others think that because they may have succeeded with one meme that they will be guaranteed success with their next venture. The best example of this in recent memory is follow-up project that the creator of the Million Dollar Homepage started after he finished making his million bucks. The man made a million dollars. Anyone in his shoes probably thought that the next move, whatever it might be, would be golden, but it was a total flop.

But hey, expect to make mistakes. You learn more from them anyway.

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9. Love it, and Let it Go

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All memes reach a point when their 15 minutes are up and the traffic levels off to die-hard fanatics, and a relatively constant stream of new visitors who come and go. As with all things in life, make sure you love what you’re doing. There’s a lot of work involved with running these things. I had to review thousands and thousands of submissions at my site’s peak. It’s hardly fun, especially knowing you’re on a ticking clock.

Also, be sure to consider the implications of being the face of your meme. The people who seem to be into it the meme I created most right now are annoying frat guys who spend their days “icing” their “bros,” and that’s not necessarily a group that I want to call myself the leader of. Sure, it’s great that so many people from around the world have enjoyed what I’m responsible for, but at the end of the day, it’s pretty ridiculous.

What are some of your favorite Internet memes? Tell us in the comments below.

As we speculated last week, Twitter is, indeed, experimenting with trending topics as ad space. This is all part of Promoted Tweets, the company’s new ad platform aimed at increasing brands’ interaction with fans — and increasing Twitter’s revenues, too.

These promoted trends are rumored to sell for tens of thousands of dollars. When a user clicks on the trending ad, he is directed to a search results page with the advertiser’s promoted tweet listed at the top. In this case, the promoted trend is from Toy Story, the first customer for trend-related advertising. Some of the promoted tweets for this ad read, “‘To infinity and beyond’! Toy Story 3 hits theaters Friday, June 18. Did you get your tickets yet?” and “Exclusive clip for our Tweeps! DJ Pogo presents a remix of the original classic before Toy Story 3 is out on 6/18.” Both contain links as calls to action, of course.

Here’s what the ads look like in action:

Of course, Twitter COO Dick Costolo insists these promoted tweets aren’t ads. But after checking out these tweets and their content, including links, an ad by any other name still smells like an ad to us.

The last six months of jockeying between Google and Apple have put a spotlight on mobile advertising. The news has been such that one could be forgiven for thinking that these two companies have the only platforms needed to reach consumers on mobile devices. Both are certainly making significant investments to be consumers' platforms of choice. They have spent over $1 billion acquiring mobile advertising companies, and released new devices to create new product categories and distribution channels (e.g., Nexus One, iPad). Not surprisingly, such moves have attracted in-depth Federal Trade Commission investigations along the way. While the convergent timing may be coincidental, it is emblematic of a broader struggle over the future of advertising.

But if, as Gartner, Pew and Morgan Stanley predict, more users access the Web through mobile devices than PCs in as soon as three years, then marketers will need solutions beyond these platforms to maximize reach and engagement with their target audiences -- audiences that use, and will continue to use, different technologies and networks. And ultimately, because advertisers care more about reach and engagement than the particular device or OS, they'll need to embrace open solutions that work seamlessly across any mobile device running any operating system.

Both Apple and Google are working to shape the mobile Web in their own image. Apple's mobile platforms enforce a "walled garden" of content and applications, controlled and distributed exclusively by Apple. In such an app-centric environment, Apple seeks to reshape the mobile Web as it sees fit. Adobe, for example, has already abandoned Flash efforts for the iPhone and iPad after recent restrictions imposed by Apple. And Apple's iAd advertising strategy seems focused on rich media delivery for premium brands.

In an opposite strategy, Google's Android platform for phones and tablets -- including its network-agnostic Nexus One -- seeks to break mobile's long history of failed walled gardens with an environment as open as the PC, friendly to all Web and client applications. Adobe Flash, to continue the previous illustration, will be supported by upcoming versions of Android. Google's advertising strategy, given auction marketplaces like Adwords and Admob, seems long-tail focused. But, according to comScore last quarter, Apple represented only 4 percent of the U.S. devices at the end of last year. Android held less than 1 percent. Nielsen reports that U.S. mobile Web reach is now 72 million, a critical mass. Clearly, to communicate with that audience, mobile advertising campaigns need to go beyond Apple to handsets from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, RIM (BlackBerry) and LG, all of which have a larger installed base than Apple.

The promise of mobile is a more effective digital advertising delivery system given the personal nature of the medium. As it further delivers on its promise -- using consumer intelligence to target people -- the audience starts to narrow, particularly if one is targeting a specific mobile device. Therefore, campaigns need to reach across multiple platforms to aggregate large enough groups of users. Mobile Web publishers, application developers and advertisers want advertising solutions that work across all handsets and operators. Fragmentation -- specifically different standards, technology platforms, and capabilities from handset manufacturers and operators -- has been another large barrier to mobile advertising adoption in markets around the world.

Android alone, for example, suffers from fragmentation with four versions since its first product shipped in October 2008. These different operating systems have different capabilities (e.g., multitouch), requiring application developers to choose whether to adapt or not support. Many long-tail publishers will use Apple's iAd service by default because it is embedded in the application development kit. Google is likely to embed such services with Android, followed similarly by other phone platform companies (e.g., RIM, Microsoft, Palm). Further, many mobile operators have already announced application storefront offerings that include embedded ad network services. With more users moving to mobile devices every day, marketing messages and advertiser spending are sure to follow. Marketers need to embrace open solutions that work across operating systems.

-By Jorey Ramer

Nearly two-thirds use location-based apps

Research from Wi-Fi provider and mobile ad server JiWire buttresses reports on the effectiveness of mobile advertising, especially in apps and location-based services.

The company found that most users of its public Wi-Fi services had downloaded at least 10 smartphone apps and about two-thirds spent more than 30 minutes a day using the applications. In addition, 63% said they “frequently” use apps that require them to give their location to serve specific content.

JiWire’s audience was somewhat less likely to say they would allow an app to access their location just to serve more relevant advertisements, but more than one-half reported they would.

While users seem to understand the trade-off of advertising for free content, with 76% saying they prefer ad-supported, free apps to paid ones, they are more ready to disclose location-based information for improved content than just for ads.

Nearly two-fifths of respondents said they were more likely to click on a mobile ad that was tailored to their specific location, while about one-half said it would not make a difference.

Overall, more than one-half of mobile device users studied said they had engaged with in-app advertising within the past month, either by clicking an ad, going to the advertiser’s Website or making a purchase.

The Mobile Marketing Association and Luth Research found that location-based mobile ads had the highest response rates but a low ad recall rate of 9%. More than one-quarter of US mobile content users, by contrast, reported seeing in-app advertising.

via emarketer.com