Collection
Sports
Athletes, Olympics and World Cups: the campaigns that defined how brands borrow — and build — sporting myth.
2020s
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2023The Everyday Tactician
To launch Football Manager 2024 on Xbox, McCann London took the series' founding fantasy, that a fan could do the manager's job better, and made it…
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2023The First Edible Mascot
A sponsorship that ate its own mascot.
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2022Never Done Evolving feat. Serena
For Nike's 50th anniversary, AKQA staged a tennis match that could never happen: Serena Williams at 17, when she won her first Grand Slam title at…
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2022World Cup Delivery
When Argentina won the 2022 football World Cup, the delivery app PedidosYa sent about six million users a push notification that looked like any…
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2022Bring Home the Bud
Two days before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, organisers banned beer sales at the stadiums, leaving official sponsor Budweiser with a warehouse of…
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2022Runner 321
A race number became a standing place at the start line.
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2021Long Live the Prince
On 18 May 2021, fifteen years after Kiyan Prince was stabbed at the gates of his north London school while trying to break up a fight, the former…
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2021The Breakaway
A prison cycling team that raced the outside world without leaving the prison.
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2020You Can't Stop Us
Ninety seconds of split screen in which 36 pairs of athletes, elite and everyday, from Serena Williams and LeBron James to Colin Kaepernick and…
2010s
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2019Stevenage Challenge
Burger King put its logo on the shirts of Stevenage, a club at the bottom of English football's fourth tier, knowing the kit would be reproduced in…
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2018Dream Crazy
The defining case of brand risk in the social-media era.
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2018Nothing Beats a Londoner
A three-minute film in which 258 young Londoners try to outdo one another's sporting feats across Dalston, Peckham and Brixton, with Mo Farah, Harry…
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2016Super Bowl Babies Choir
For its 50th Super Bowl, the NFL turned a piece of sports folklore into a choir.
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2016Unlimited Stadium
A running track where the opponent was your own last lap.
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2014I Will What I Want (Gisele Bündchen)
When Under Armour signed supermodel Gisele Bündchen, plenty of people online said she was no athlete, and Droga5 made those comments the ad.
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2013Sound of Honda / Ayrton Senna 1989
In qualifying for the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna set the fastest lap yet seen at Suzuka, and his McLaren Honda MP4/5 recorded it as…
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2013Immortal Fans
A football club that asked its supporters to keep cheering after death.
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2012Meet the Superhumans
The film that changed how disability is shown on screen.
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2012Best Job ("Thank You, Mom")
How a company with no sports products won the Olympics.
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2011Be the Coach
Carling Black Label created a new pre-season derby between Soweto rivals Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, then handed the fans the coach's job.
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2010Write the Future
The biggest canvas sports advertising has attempted: a three-minute epic in which a single touch — Rooney's loose pass, Ronaldo's free kick —…
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2010Dutch Dress
Dutch brewer Bavaria was not a World Cup sponsor; Budweiser was the official beer in 2010.
2000s
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2009Chalkbot
Fans at the Tour de France have long painted messages on the road for the riders.
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2006Bonded by Blood
Every year adidas issued a commemorative All Blacks team poster.
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2005Crossbar ("Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold")
Ronaldinho laces up a pair of white-and-gold Nike Tiempo boots, juggles a ball towards the box and strikes the crossbar four times in a row without…
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2003Terry Tate: Office Linebacker
A 300-pound linebacker levels office workers for leaving no coffee in the pot.
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Vertical Footballadidas2003
Vertical Football
In late summer 2003, TBWA\Japan turned an adidas billboard in Tokyo into a football pitch stood on its end.
1990s
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Power is nothing without control.Pirelli1994
Power Is Nothing Without Control (Carl Lewis)
The fastest man in the world, crouched in the starting blocks, wearing red stiletto heels.
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1993The Showdown (Jordan vs. Bird)
Michael Jordan and Larry Bird play an escalating game of H-O-R-S-E for a Big Mac — "off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through…
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1992Hare Jordan
Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny team up in a gym to outwit a gang of basketball bullies, mixing live action with hand-drawn Looney Tunes slapstick…
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1991Be Like Mike
The jingle that defined athlete aspiration — written on a tablecloth in a crisis.
1980s
1970s
1960s
1900s
About Sports
The best sports ads: campaigns built around athletes, the Olympics and the World Cup. Sport gives brands ready-made drama, heroes and rivalries, and the best work here borrows that myth and adds to it, from Nike's "Just Do It" to Coca-Cola's "Mean Joe Greene".