Football Resurrected

American football’s image has taken some serious body blows lately. There’s Pacman Jones, Odell Thurman, the Cleveland Brown’s Ryan Tucker, and who can forget Michael Vick? In the midst of all this hub-bub, the long awaited follow-up to video game title NFL 2K5 (widely regarded as one of the best football games ever) has finally landed. The game, All-Pro Football 2K8 features some of the best players the NFL has ever had. The usual advertising collateral was created for their campaign called “Football Resurrected,” but the makers of the game 2K and their ad agency, EVB, also seemed to have a moment of genius. EVB created webisodes featuring six legendary rap artists to speak the truth about why “the game is back.” MCs Rakim, M-1, Jurassic 5 and others rapped about individual players or aspects of the gameplay. The amazing Rakim apparently told EVB that, ‘I just want you to know that I’ve been playing 2K Sports since the Dreamcast guys.’

We’re applauding EVB. They did a great job of matching up the right genre (hip hop) to their target demographic (young males, suburban/urban, 12-25) with the right medium (the web). EVB also realized that the game features iconic players like Jerry Rice. Rightly, the campaign focuses on the “glory days” of the NFL  and that of hip-hop, too. Hey – they could of picked Ludacris rather than Rakim for these spot, but Rakim? He’s a totally “glory days” rapper. Where they may have missed the mark is by not employing video sharing sites to their full advantage. Currently, there are only 2 episodes loaded on YouTube. Shame, because the episodes are fun for any hip-hop fan, any football junkie.

Read an interview about the work with Jason Zada, Executive Creative Director and Co Founder of EVB, here.