Sometimes I write about advertising on this thing. This will be one of those times.
Advertising used to be, and in many cases still is, one-way communication. “Hey, newspaper reader/magazine reader/radio listener/television view, check out my product! It does this cool thing that you need. Please buy it. All right, see you later!” would be the message from the advertiser to a mass audience. As technology gave us new toys to play with (internet and cellphones for example) advertisers have found ways to communicate with us using those devices, not just communicate to us. In an ideal world, there will be more of a dialogue between people and advertisers so we can chose with which brands we want to have a meaningful relationship.
Blah blah blah, here is what I’m getting at. A year ago, a fan of the EA Sports game Tiger Woods 08 posted a video of a glitch he found in the game that allowed Tiger Woods to play a ball from the water. He dubbed this the “Jesus Shot.” Here is the video:
The eagle-eyed folks at Wieden+Kennedy saw this video, and it gave them an idea for a video promoting Tiger Woods 09. Skeptics may say the first video was a plant to begin with, although the original posting date and seemingly authentic YouTube user account leads me to believe it’s real. Regardless, here is the EA Sports response to the “Jesus Shot” video.
The result is a brand creating a dialogue with one of its fans, albeit a very public and not exactly one-on-one message to this person. And kudos to EA for having the balls to do it with obvious allusions to a religious figure.
All that said, this is pretty cool.
