‘Leaked’ Nike World Cup Ad Goes Viral Before It Even Launches

These days, advertising, especially online, is about going viral, having people share the ads with their friends getting as much exposure as possible, organically. Well, Nike sure does seem to have [i]scored a goal with its latest ad campaign, ‘Write the Future,’ ahead of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The campaign hasn’t even been launched officially yet and it’s already raking up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube.

Nike has been drumming up anticipation for the ads with some teaser clips and tidbits of information. The plan is to launch it on Sunday on TV in 32 countries. All the while, the full video ad was tucked hidden away in the YouTube vaults ready for its official debut. Or was it? Well, obviously not, or you wouldn’t be reading this.

The video was marked as ‘unlisted,’ a new privacy option YouTube introduced, which means that you couldn’t find it unless you had the direct link to it. But someone did find it and, by the looks of it, eventually, so did the rest of the world. At this point, it has well over 800,000 views on YouTube and will likely hit one million in a few hours.

The ad itself is pretty great, not that it could have been anything else considering its obvious enormous budget and star-studded cast. Football stars that is, fans will spot Rooney, Ronaldo, Ribery, Didier Drogba, Patrice Evra and Ronaldinho, some of the best, or at least the most popular football players in the world.

Non-football fans may also spot a few cameo appearances from tennis phenomenon Roger Federer, Los Angles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant (for the US viewers no doubt) and one, decidedly un-athletic, Homer J. Simpson. Directed by Alejandro G Inarritu, also known for films like 21 Grams and Babel, the spot doesn’t fail to impress.

Still, it seems like somewhat of a mishap on the part of Nike to leave the YouTube clip ‘in the open’ like that. What’s more, once it noticed that people were watching it, in the thousands, why didn’t it just set the clip to ‘private?’ Regardless, the clip is there, embeddable no less, for football fans and non-fans alike to enjoy.