Round 7 of 8: March
David Smith.
Founder, blood utd
David Smith makes sport ads. He didn’t mean to only make sport ads, but the more he made them, the more people asked him to do them. And then all of sudden he was the sport guy, and all he did was sport ads. But that’s okay because he really loves doing them. So much so, he opened his own agency called BLOOD UTD, which makes, guess what, sport ads.
Prior to that he ran Nike and EA Sports for Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam. Where he produced some of the most recognisable sport work in the world.
His work has covered everything from world cups to street football, from the NBA to the NRL, from filming ski bums to rugby freaks, from sprinters to sloggers, hooligans in Grimsby to ice hockey in Russia and high jump in Doha. Because of this, he has rarely had a dull day at the office, except that time they asked him to do a shampoo ad.
When he is not making sport ads, David writes about politics and social issues, does crossfit so he can say he does crossfit, cycles badly, runs like a seal, not a navy seal, but a blubber one, and watches way too much footie, and not enough cricket.
Brief: "LIVE SPORT"
“Reignite the interest of young people in watching live sport.”
Ah, watching the big match, sitting down with your mates, with your old man, and your football-obsessed mum, taking in a huge cultural moment, we all do it right? Unfortunately, things are changing. Across the planet, sport viewing numbers are in decline. Be it the Super Bowl, the English Premier League, the Olympics, young people are no longer tuning into sport in the same numbers that they used to. Instead there has been a shift towards social and scripted content, and of course, eSport. So how do we bring them back?
WHAT IS OUR PRODUCT?
Live sports. Not the highlights package on Instagram, but watching the live event. Whether that is on your TV, phone, or down the pub, we want people to come back to watching the events live.
WHO ARE WE TALKING TO?
Young people, the ones who’d rather catch a series on Netflix, or look at short videos on facebook or snapchat. The ones who don’t seem to see watching sport as a relevant form of entertainment anymore.
WHAT ARE WE ASKING YOU TO DO?
Come up with a creative platform or idea that can reignite the interest of young people in watching live sport. In essence, this is a “why sport?” brief. How do we make sport relevant to young people again?
CONSIDERATIONS
This is a massive brief, and one that is of huge importance to the sport world. From the EPL to the NFL, from ESPN to FOX Sports, from Nike to Adidas, this issue has the potential to really impact on everyone’s bottom-line. In light of that, ideas need to be big, they need to be emotive, and capture the mood of society, they need to be Zeitgeist-like nature. So no gimmicks, no small fry app ideas, or lame-duck activation ideas, it is the time to flex your copy and art muscles, sport is a powerful medium, here is your chance to use it, think global, think universal, think “impossible is nothing, just do it, it’s half-time, America, It’s not crazy, it’s sport.” Yeah, baby, let’s smash it out the park!
