Forget Cristiano Ronaldo vs Lionel Messi. VAR vs common sense. Hydration breaks vs viewers’ attention levels. The fiercest rivalry at this World Cup hasn’t been on the pitch at all, it’s been in the ad breaks.
Sportswear heavyweights Nike and Adidas have gone head-to-head with blockbuster World Cup campaigns, each packed with football royalty and enough star power to rival the tournament itself.
While Adidas enjoys the advantage of being an official FIFA World Cup sponsor, Nike has once again shown it doesn’t need a fancy tournament logo to be the talk of the tournament.
For its “Rip the Script” campaign, Nike enlisted the likes of Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James.
You can watch the ad here:
Not to be outdone, Adidas assembled its own dream team for “Backyard Legends”, a cinematic campaign that brings together Lamine Yamal, Jude Bellingham, Lionel Messi, Zinedine Zidane and, erm, Timothée Chalamet, in a celebration of football’s past, present and future. Plus a Hollywood star.
Here’s Adidas’ ad:
Both ads are pretty long. More like short films than ads. But despite the long running lengths, both have won praise from fans. But which campaign scores when it comes to overall effectiveness?
Well, to find out, we handed DAIVID’s AI-powered Creative Data API an England shirt, an indigestible meat pie and a head full of unrealistic expectations, to see which team was more likely to score big with consumers.
Trained on tens of millions of human responses to advertising, DAIVID’s predictive algorithm reveals the emotional and business impact of ads within minutes without the need for audience panels, enabling advertisers to measure campaign effectiveness at scale.
Here’s what we found:
Both ads likely to bore viewers
Both are blockbuster ads packed with football stars – past and present. One (Adidas) even throws in a Hollywood A-lister to add a touch of stardust.
But that doesn’t stop either campaign from scoring above average for boredom. And we’re not talking about a small amount.
Adidas’ “Backyard Legends” was 71.3% more likely to bore viewers than the average ad, while Nike’s “Rip the Script” went even further, coming in at 89.4% above the norm.
Not helped by their extended runtimes, both films struggle to keep viewers entertained throughout. And this is also reflected in the predicted attention scores.
Adidas’ ad starts slightly below average in the opening seconds but manages to climb to just above-average attention by the final three seconds (+1.2%). Nike, by contrast, remains below average from start to finish.
Nike attracts intense feelings of awkwardness and confusion
The director featured in Nike’s ad was not the only one left disappointed and frustrated with what was going on.
According to the data, the campaign was 45.6% more likely to generate negative emotions than the average ad, and 33.3% more likely than Adidas’s World Cup campaign.
Feelings of awkwardness (+98.3%), confusion (+89.4%) and even anger (+60.7%) were particularly prevalent, especially in the opening moments, which led to many switching off completely. People were a little confused at what was happening at the start, and it did not really pick up after that.
Meanwhile, Adidas’ “Backyard Legends” attracted lower-than-average negativity overall, with confusion (+13.6%) one of the few negative emotions that exceeded the norm.
Nike gets the laughs, but neither ad wins on positivity
With so much negativity flying around, it’s hardly surprising that feelings of positivity were also lower than average for both campaigns.
“Backyard Legends” was 58.7% more likely to make people laugh than the average ad and 54.1% more likely to excite viewers. It also over-indexed on surprise (+53.7%), inspiration (+15.6%) and interest (+14.7%). However, overall positive emotion sat slightly below average (-1.3%).
Meanwhile, Nike’s “Rip the Script” struggled to convert its star power into positive emotions. While it was more likely to make people chuckle (+60.6% above norm) and generated above average feelings of interest (+6.1%) and excitement (+3%), it under-indexed on core positive emotions overall, sitting below the norm for key emotions such as happiness, inspiration and warmth.
Nike – “Rip The Script” Summary
Almost 8 out of 10 viewers correctly name Adidas as brand behind ad
Of course, if no one knows which brand is behind which creative, all the budget invested counts for little. The good news is that both campaigns scored highly for brand recall.
While 7 in 10 viewers (69.3%) could correctly name Nike as the brand behind “Rip The Script”, almost 8 in 10 (77.2%) were able to identify Adidas as the brand behind “Backyard Legends”, both comfortably above the average.
Adidas – “Backyard Legends” – summary
