That's How You Jump Over an Aston Martin, BOY!

Is it real? Is it fake? Does it even matter? The point is that Nike has intelligently devised a way to make me wonder about it. During my 10 replays trying to see whether it's real or fake, I saw Kobe putting on his new Nike shoe 10 times. The thing is I know it's fake because no professional player would be allowed to put himself in that type of danger. Obviously this video is not for people that think like that. This video is probably targeted towards a younger demographic that idolizes Kobe and wants to believe that he could jump over a car and they want his shoes so they can feel like they can jump that high. The truth is that he does jump high enough to clear it.

What fascinates me about the whole thing is that Nike is not mentioned anywhere in the video so it looks like a normal YouTube video uploaded by a regular person. It adds that personal aspect to the video that makes it seem like it is not an advertisement, but it is. I love that Nike has successfully used a popular medium to their advantage, and the fact that this video costs almost nothing to make and definitely nothing to upload to the web makes it a great advantage. This is buzz marketing at its core. The low budget video has created such a buzz that it actually has gotten free airplay (I'm assuming) on TNT and ESPN during the playoff analysis shows. YouTube also allows a way of tracking frequency. You can see how many views the video has gotten.
Overall this shows that copywriting doesn't necessarily mean writing great copy, it could mean coming up with great ideas and this is a great idea.