Canadian Hockey Bro Becomes a Bigger Asshole in Each Chapter of This Nike Campaign by W+K

By Patrick Coffee 

We know nothing about hockey. Or the IIHF Ice Hockey World Junior Championships. Or even Canada, really.

But we are fascinated by people acting like massive assholes in public, which is probably why we were interested in this campaign from Nike and Wieden + Kennedy Portland (who else?!).

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Clientside PR pitched this one to us as “the first campaign of its kind,” and while we can’t be quite sure of that, the concept is pretty cool. There’s a separate :90 for each day in the 9-day tournament—and in each one our protagonist gets progressively meaner to the people around him.

In the first one, he knocks over a grandmother’s trash and destroys some mannequins but also gives his hat to a cold dog. A mixed bag, really.

Then it gets worse. Each version depicts the same series of events with a bunch of little variations that change the character very slightly in a style somewhat similar to that Spike Jonze Kylie Minogue video where she keeps following the same pattern over and over again. You know the one.
Then it pretty much keeps going like this.



It’s pretty cool to follow all the little differences between the spots, like the fact that the car in the beginning gains more lame bumper stickers just as the garage gains more dents and the driver’s “Dude!” gets a little louder.



By the time the last chapter rolls around, dude straight up crashes through the wall to get to the ice.

The point, of course, is that Canadians aren’t really as “nice” as we Yankees seem to think. Especially when they’re playing hockey.

It would be asking a bit much of the average viewer to sit through nine of these like we just did, but that’s not the way they were intended to be watched. As W+K CD Chris Groom told Strategy Online, the client’s massive media buy (31 placements over the 9 days of the tournament) helped guide the strategy as young hockey fanatics played “spot the difference.”

Director Keith McCarthy of Stink Films said, “I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this constantly escalating, constantly evolving giant of an idea. It was an incredible challenge and an amazing opportunity to do something no one has ever done before.”

We’re just happy the dog still gets to keep the hat in the end.

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