Friday, March 20, 2009

Become Jewish

Nike's been running a fairly entertaining series of ads for its Air Jordan line of sneakers, under the tagline "become legendary". Basically, they show college hoops fans showing an irrational dislike of a name, place, or event due to its association with a heartbreaking defeat by their beloved fan. So a Texan at his daughter's sixth birthday party talks about how "it was a day he'd never forget" in a miserable monotone -- then cutting to clips from that day when Syracuse drubbed Texas to win the NCAA championship. Or a manager from Syracuse who says that none of the 600 employees at his manufacturing plant are named Ray ("no Raymonds either"), with a cut away to Ray Allen lighting up the Syracuse University Orangemen.

And I'm thinking, these are good ads. But the one I really want to see is the Kentucky town which converted en masse to Judaism in response to Christian Laettner's famous last-second fade away OT winner. That would be edgy advertising.

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