#COMMUNICATELENS: 2 JULY
From the community-based football scene in Atlanta to educational videos on child nudes, here is our pick of the latest in video communications. For more from #CommunicateLens, follow @Communicatemag.
New Balance
Major sports footwear New Balance Football partnered with creative agency ZAK to launch their ‘Football’s Next Wave’ campaign, a three-part documentary-series that highlights the subcultures and communities thriving around the game. The video unveils the nascent soccer scene in Atlanta and the idea of aspiring to icons is suddenly flipped and the audience are the heroes. All three videos play host to people who, like the brand, are ready to kick back against the established set of rules. According to ZAK’S CCO, Matt Bennet, the campaign is about creating new definitions of success whereby you don’t need to make it as a pro player in national teams to be deemed successful.
“A lot of the reason why US soccer is not as developed as it should be is because you have to pay to play in. Talent never really got recognised at those higher levels if you couldn’t afford to. No one has a $1,000 to spend on going to play soccer for fun, go outside,” says Sekou Thornell, founder of Kitboys Club, a creative brand collective the blurs the line between urban culture and sport.
The campaign seeks to position New Balance Football as a brand that champions the unconventional: in the series, superstars make way for real talent and traditional football settings make way for more emotive storytelling.
“Football’s Next Wave is influential in the global football game, now more than ever. We’ve worked across the New Balance global brand and with ZAK to identify powerful, influential and emotive stories of how individuals and communities around the world are leaving their own mark on the game we all love,” says Nicola Jones, global senior marketing manager for New Balance Football.
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP)
Working with creative partner Malt the CEOP launched ‘Send me a pic?’, a new education resource from CEOP’s Thinkuknow education programme exploring nude image sharing for 12-14 year olds. The series of one-and-a-half-minute videos seek to help young people spot the signs of manipulative, pressurising and abusive behaviour and assist them in developing the skills, knowledge and confidence they need to identify risk online and access help if needed. The videos are clear and concise, showing fictional online chats showing young people requesting, receiving and discussing issues related to the sharing of nude images. In one, a predator is shown asking for a ‘sexy video’ and then never replies again.
During the research and design process, Malt found that young people were very aware of these issues but didn’t have the tools to spot them or the language to raise the issues with peers or adults. The videos particularly focus on issues related to the consensual and non-consensual sharing of these images amongst young people. The videos were launched at this unusual time, to give professionals the opportunity to embed ‘Send me a pic?’ over the summer into a progressive Personal, Social, Health, and Economic (PSHE) education curriculum, as part of Relationships and Sex Education.