The Best Brands Make You Feel...
...+ why Ronaldinho is the best to ever do it 😤. This week we're looking at sports personalities, brands and their ability to make audiences feel an emotion
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Nothing moves people emotionally like sports.
In the last week we’ve seen Ronaldinho touch down and lock off London. From Nike Town in Oxford Street at Nike Town all the way to Shepherds Bush Powerleague, he had the streets in the palm of his hand. A Déjà vu moment from when he landed at the cages in Peckham in 2017 and had grown men screaming. R10’s ability to captivate audiences remains. Best believe if I was there I would be screaming too.
If you saw the footage from West London on the weekend you would have seen millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha all taken aback by the presence of R10. Ronaldinho transcends generations. Nike bringing Ronaldinho out with Central Cee (rapper) and Clint (founder of Corteiz), who are both icons in their own right for Gen Z/Alpha, has also contributed to this cross-generational moment for Ronaldinho.
To understand why Ronaldinho makes grown adults feel a type of way we have to reload it to his playing career. Growing up if you ever watched Ronaldinho you would have seen the smile he played with. He encapsulated the vibes from playground football on a global stage. His smile, the ability, the goals, and the tricks he had up his sleeve made for an iconic aesthetic. Ronaldinho was blessed to play in an era of football were individual brilliance was still celebrated and before the soulless, systemic ways of positional play took over.
For me and many others, Ronaldinho is the reason for our love of the game. He is a personification of ‘The Beautiful Game’. Joga Bonito is a lifestyle. The first skill me and my mates were trying to learn was the ‘Ronaldinho Flip-Flap’. That gas of pulling off your first-flap cannot be underestimated. The Chelsea toe poke lives rent free in my head. Till this day I will still watch YouTube highlights of his standing ovation performance at the Bernabeu. R10 had a hold on all of us. Ronaldinho brought emotion to our lives through the medium of football. Universally loved. The best brands always have this ability to provoke emotion.
Nike have stuttered in this regard in recent times. Joga Bonito, Just Do It with Caster Semenya, Dream Crazy with Colin Kaepernick were iconic back in the day. To regain this feeling they’ve attached themselves to Clint and his streetwear brand Corteiz. Corteiz have a strong feeling and message, that is magnified by their community. Corteiz is a brand you can’t imagine without Clint, the brand and Clint’s personal brand are perfectly intertwined. It highlights the power of personality-led brands.
Adidas have tapped into this last week with Ant-Man, Anthony Edwards, a huge personality in the league. A personality who splits opinion, unlike R10, you either love him or hate him. Regardless, he evokes emotion. The Minnesota Timberwolves shooting guard had a good run in the play-offs before eventually crashing out to Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks. Fan and player emotions will have been high and Adidas have come out to support their star in the aftermath of this loss with this ‘receipts’ campaign. Where Ant-Man has kept receipts of all the hate he’s been receiving before finishing up with a powerful ‘Believe That’. A message to show the masses that Ant-Man still has an unwavering confidence he can do anything despite the hate. ‘Believe That’ - two words that will stand the test of time.
One of the haters on the receipts was none other than rapper Cam’ron saying “To me he’s an All-star, but not a superstar yet”. To which Edwards dismisses him with a “F*ck, buddy”, authentic to his personality. Triggering Cam’ron to feel some type of way and diss track season continued. Cam’ron dropped a cold freestyle firing back at Ant-Man and Adidas in a Luka Dončić jersey. 🤣
In an era of paid boost shortcuts and vanity metrics, make sure you make audiences feel something. Nothing moves people emotionally like sports, tap into it and you too might get an OG rapper fire shots at you.