My better is better than your better

I am loving Wieden & Kennedy’s “My Better” ad campaign for Nike SPARQ (Speed Power Agility Reaction Quickness) Training. The commercials – featuring LaDainian Tomlinson, Hope Solo, Matt Holiday (pictured below) and other top athletes – all make some sort of impression, whether it be a smile or a little motivation.

The first of the series of commercials to catch my attention features a HARD-hitting track by rapper/poet Saul Wiliams (a Newburgh, NY native) and can be seen here. As a fan of (but by no means expert on) intelligent hip hop, I remember when this song, List of Demands, dropped back in 2004. I was hooked. Its intense base riff and just-as-intense lyrics were, and still are, like nothing I have ever heard. Commercials often seem to blend into one another, and agencies put so much time and money into making their spots memorable, but sometimes a stand out track like this is all that is needed.

The SPARQ commercial that really motivated me to write a blog post, however, was this one:

I find Steve Nash absolutely hilarious in this commercial. Everything he does and says (or rather, the way in which he says it) is awesome. I remember reading in some advertising book about how Nike became cool by being cool, not by saying they were cool. The legacy continues.