The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport, Wrestling, PHP, SEO, Social Media & Networking

It’s nearly here! Four years since the last tournament, and I’m already wetting myself with excitement. Despite adopting a classic “anybody but England” mentality (as always), I’ve bought myself an Australian top, and really looking forward to games this time around.

These last four years have seen a lot of changes, including having mates rich enough to go to South Africa for the tournament (one of my friends will be at the final, lucky bastard), and the rise of social media & advertising. Ad guys are spending small fortunes for a few clicks. Some work, some don’t, here are some of my favourite virals from recent tournaments.

Nike Football – Write The Future Advert

A work of cinematic genius this one, and possibly one of my favourite adverts of the last few years. It employs Lost style flash forwards to show footballers lives after they win or lose important moments in games. Big budget & proper footballing porn. Plus it shows Wayne Rooney living in a caravan, something I enjoyed seeing immensely.

It stands out for me because it’s not England centric. Unlike every other advert on the box at the moment, there’s 3 countries that receive TV that aren’t in the world cup & would enjoy seeing England eliminated early on. This advert isn’t as offensive as some (including that silly Carlsberg ad, with the line “Do It, for Bobby” – which will probably & a little wrongly be end up taking the piss out of England, see here), which means that those whose countries aren’t in this summer’s festivities can still enjoy it, top work.

Nokia N8 Foosball Fever Advert

Being a towering centre-back (ha!), I’m not one to like fancy tricks, but fancy tricks seem to come around for an easy World Cup advert. But this isn’t for the cup, though influenced by football, and feature a lot of tricks. Instead it’s unique because it features table football (foosball?) tricks, and it’s unique and interesting.

But what makes this brilliant is that it shows you the tricks after, with links to other videos. Not sure how they’ve done it (both the tricks & the video linking), but it’s great. Bravo Nokia!

My Panini

If you have been following my Twitter feed, you will have seen that I’ve been collecting the Panini sticker album, and on the Panini website is the “My Panini” site, where with an upload of a photo of yourself & it is placed within a surround, even with your own country flag (one I did for the last tournament is above).

What’s cool though is you can actually buy them online! So not only is it a great little viral thing, it is also profitable.

As An Aside…

I’ve been collecting the World Cup Stickers, so if you have any swapsees, either contact me & I’ll get back to you with a list, or visit Swapse.es to see my twitter based swaps.

WKD’s Euro 2004 Promotion

Okay not World Cup, but WKD’s Euro 2004 promotion was a stroke of genius. No videos, but instead it was found in pubs, specifically little boys’ rooms.

One long urinal, two goals either side, and a small plastic ball. A bit like blow football, but, y’know.

But it was brilliant, we attended every game in the tournament in that bar (it was the only one in there), probably sold a few more WKD’s for….ahem…..ammo.

Your Favourite?

What have been your favourite World Cup virals? Who do you want to win the whole thing?