Reebok's Hot Streak

For the past few years, the Reebok logo has dominated the product-placement paradise of Survivor. But as for mainstream buzz about its television ads, the sneaker maker has pretty much been voted off the island.That was until two weeks ago, when Terrible Terry Tate, office linebacker, erupted at the Super Bowl. Suddenly, Reebok has the Big Mo. In the image-adrenaline rush since then, the Reebok enforcer has become so visible, so popular, that in a follow-up spot that broke last week on American Idol, big man Tate actually tackles the Nike streaker and gets knowing laughs just doing it. ("You just did it, so I had to hit it. Wooo!" Terry screams at the pounced-on runner, using his trademark whistle sound—for the pain train—as the crowd roars.)Now, Wieden + Kennedy's Nike spot is a master stroke: production so brilliant that you had to tap the clicker to see how a soccer game suddenly switched on. (The announcer is in midsyllable when the spot starts.) As the crazy naked guy flaps around on the field, the deadpan remarks of the imperturbable British analysts are hilarious: "Oh dear, looks like he has more souvenirs for the crowd."The idea of ads parodying other ads is common; what's different here is the accelerated time frame—the Nike ad has been on the air for only a few weeks. So Reebok is acknowledging Nike's lightning-quick infiltration of pop consciousness, at the least, and cross-referencing both products. There's also the danger of viewers' thinking it's still a Nike ad, giving even more power to Swooshers. On the other hand, Reebok is making a clever (and competitive) cultural reference and showing that its new character can literally level the playing field. And he does.The crew had a weekend to pull it off. The sound, the crowd, the camera angles, the deadpan presenter's sensibility, the streaker's scarf, not to mention the digital box around his jewels are all captured perfectly ("Oh my, here we go again. ... He's not going to make it to the Royal Ballet"). At 60 seconds, one of the strengths and weaknesses of the Nike spot is the seemingly endless period when we're in the dark about this exasperating guy as he showboats with a pole, does a handstand, etc. At :30, the Reebok spot has no time for that—it's a supercharged strike that resolves itself quickly with the Terry tackle. He nails the guy (who really is a bit offensive), providing a funny clincher that the original just didn't have.How did this 330 pounder in the red jersey become a national treasure in a mere two weeks? The back story is as intriguing as the commercials. The office linebacker character had such immediate power because he was hatched as a fully formed hero of a screenplay, a work by USC film-school grad student Rawson Thurber in summer 2000. Thurber was also working as an intern at William Morris at the time. He loved football and he hated office life, and decided to combine the two sentiments. Almost everyone can relate to the tedium of Dilbertville in gray pods of cubicles, but this offers a tough new take—that you're gonna get off that private call and put the paper back in the copier or get tackled by Terry Tate. There's something of Mr. T in him, crossed with Monty Python, and it works. My trouble with the spot originally was the Reebok disconnect: just one frame with the logo tacked on at the end. Now I get it—the player is the thing. He's larger than any mere shoe, and had Reebok put Survivor-style bandannas and footwear into the mix, it would have been a disaster. Thurber originally pitched his work as an Internet film, and Propaganda Films gave him a tiny budget to produce it on digital video in the fall of 2000. One of the people who responded to the open casting call was Lester Speight, then selling himself as The Mighty Rasta, a wrestler who'd played college ball and had a "brief stint" with the New York Giants. He's fearless, and he can act, and under his crushing presence, the concept sprang to life. It was "horrible quality," according to Thurber, but pirated versions soon began circulating.Then the production company Hypnotic bought the work and in the interest of "branded entertainment," brought it to The Arnell Group, Reebok's new agency. The rest is now living on the Reebok Web site (there will be four films in all) and in Super Bowl history.Interestingly, the work followed the same route into advertising as Budweiser's Lion-winning series "True": Charles Stone had written and directed a film on spec with his buddies using their signature salute, "Whassup." He originally intended for a phone company to use it. When DDB bought it, the agency kept the original cast and Stone's direction.Everything about Terry Tate's fame is so sped up that I'm not sure how long he'll last. But what's undeniable is that Reebok, as the Brit announcer in the Nike spot puts it, "is off like a bull with gas."

Brand Marketing

Reebok's Hot Streak

Barbara Lippert

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Barbara Lippert