Success

The Nike commercial "Fate" is a recent advertisement that follows the lives of the San Diego Chargers' running back Ladainian Tomlinson and the Pittsburgh Steelers' safety Troy Polamalu, starting in utero and continuing to their meeting playing against each other in a NFL game. The commercial was directed by well known filmmaker David Fincher (Fight Club and Zodiac) with cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men and Burn After Reading) and music by Ennio Morricone called "The Ecstasy of Gold", taken from the film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Nike uses all these talents to present a story of success to use as a front for their products. Something to represent what they think their products mean and symbolize. For this ad Nike choose the theme of success and they try to make the viewer desire for that success, like they did in another one of their ads, "Courage", this way making us not look at their products so much, but at their company and what they represent.

The main purpose of the "Fate" ad is (simply and obviously) to make us buy Nike products. This is the elementary purpose of most ads, but how they do this in this particular ad is by presenting a desire for success to the viewer and they present that desire through various means like story, phrases, and music, the main way being the story though. The ad shows clips of Tomlinson and Polamalu growing up and learning the skills that it will take to play in the NFL. For example, it shows them tackling a bean bag, running through a yard, studying in school, and playing amateur football. These early scenes in the ad show that these two people had a desire when they were very young to play football and that it was something they wanted to achieve in life. Then, at the end of the advertisement it shows the two boys, now men, playing pro-football in the NFL and the key moment in that scene is when Polamalu tackles Tomlinson and there is a quick cut of them as kids falling down onto a bed. This cut reminds us of their young aspirations and goals--what they wanted to achieve in life. Then when it cuts back to them as men, it shows that they have indeed accomplished their goals and in fact succeeded in their aspirations. After that tackle, the two men get up and a two words appear on the screen: leave nothing. What Nike means by this is give it your all, fulfill your childhood dreams, create your own success. It summarizes what the ad is about: leave nothing unfinished and fulfill your goals. Through this theme, Nike creates this idea of success that can be affiliated their business and products, even though you don't see any Nike products obviously advertised--there are no Nike T-shirts or shoes that you can easily make out in the ad that are Nike made. That is because they are trying to focus more on a general quality that can be affiliated with their business. Creating an image that can be desired for. The music also contributes to this desire. It is a very ethereal song that evokes a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. Even in the movie it was originally used in, it's played when a character reaches his goal of finding the treasure he's been looking for the whole film. All these aspects of the ad contribute to the one desire Nike is trying to make: success.

Nike uses this form of immersing the viewer in its theme in a lot of its advertisements, "Courage" being another one of them. In "Courage" there is a series of quick shots, consisting mostly of people accomplishing great athletic feats, accompanied by a song by the Killers, "I've Got Soul, but I'm not a Soldier." It shows athletes sometimes making and sometimes failing in their game. But either way, it shows them trying to accomplish their dreams no matter the odds or obstacles. This ad it makes you see them succeeding no matter if they actually win or not, because as long as they have tried, they are not losers, but winners. It shows that as long as you try, you are a winner--you succeed. The phrase at the end of the ad is "just do it," and that sums up what I just said: as long as you do it, you win.
These ads create a desire for success by showing examples of it. Nike doesn't try to simply advertise their product, but instead tries and show us what they want to represent as a company by invoking those desires within us through their ads. They want the viewer, after watching the ad, to feel that they are also capable of reaching their own goals and succeeding in their own life, like the people in the advertisement. This way, through the desires they have created, people will now want to buy Nike products, because now they represent something more then an inanimate object. They represent something that can link the viewer of the ad to the success that that specific person hasn't yet accomplished. Buying a Nike product has now turned into a Freudian-type of desire to fulfill something from childhood and it tells you more about the person buying the product then the actual product does. For example, it's not the shoes the person has, but what that person wants to do with those shoes that tells us about themselves and what they wants to accomplish. Most people still have something they want to accomplish in their life and these ads show us that we shouldn't let anything hold us back. That we should embrace the things we haven't accomplished and try to fulfill them. And even if we can't actually fulfill them, we can still succeed at it because as long as we know that we've tried, we can consider ourselves not a failure, but a success.
Travis Torok
TA: Steve Wetzel