Word: ronaldinho
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...Latino neighbors as she waddles down the street. I nod, proudly and smugly. (O.K., some Americans do inherit their fandom.) The same emotions course through me as I consider how a Barça victory would confirm so much: they play the most attractive football in recent memory; Ronaldinho is a player for the ages; once and for all, Barça will shed their lineage of underachievement. But there's no way that I will be able to fully enjoy this game, to root against Henry and other Arsenal players I love. Even if Barça wins...
...expletive-of-choice way. Those are the only possible human reactions to viewing Ping Pong, the underground Nike soccer ad that has dribbled around the Web faster than Pel� in his prime. In the spot, Ronaldinho, a Brazilian considered the world's best soccer player, laces up his new Nike cleats, the Swoosh as golden as his game, and then, from the top of the 18-yd. box, fires a soccer ball off the 4-in. crossbar. Before the ball touches the ground, he corrals the rebound on his chest, juggles the ball with his feet and repeats the feat...
...Nike, it's even better that--as many have suspected--the spot is digitally altered. It turns out Ronaldinho is somewhat mortal, even in his new boots. Fans have debated the clip endlessly, and Ping Pong has been viewed 12 million times since its October Web-only release, one of the most popular viral videos on the Internet today. Even for a company known for its winning, edgy marketing, that is a hat trick. By creating a youth-driven buzz so crucial to its leadership in the multibillion-dollar sneaker wars, Nike, based in Beaverton, Ore.the largest sporting-goods company...
Nike also scooped up such world-class stars as Brazilians Ronaldinho and Ronaldo, British sensation Wayne Rooney and American Landon Donovan to wear the company's boots. It paid marquee European clubs--Manchester United and Arsenal in England, Juventus in Italy and FC Barcelona in Spain--to wear the Swoosh on their kits...
...YouTube hosts millions of hours of drunken parties, tearful confessions, smiling babies, sleeping cats and screen grabs from World of Warcraft, all doomed to obscurity. Nike showed a firm grasp of the form with a popular clip, an ad stealthily designed to look like amateur footage, showing soccer deity Ronaldinho putting on a pair of sneakers and then, incredibly, nailing the crossbar with a soccer ball four times in a row. Some of the successes are accidental. For a while, one of the popular movies on Google Video was a 20-sec. clip of a kid falling off a jungle...