Wieden & Kennedy Entertainment (WKE), the ad agency’s branded entertainment division, on Sunday “bows one of its biggest projects to date, an hour-long documentary about soccer in Brazil,” according to Alice Cuneo of AD AGE’s MADISON & VINE. The project will air in the U.S. on the Fox Soccer channel and Fox Sports en Espanol, then will be “turned into two- to five-minute versions that will appear online.” Extended versions of the film will be submitted to festivals and theaters worldwide. Also, WKE recently completed its third season of “Battlegrounds,” Nike’s “salute to street basketball.” In this year’s effort, Cavaliers F LeBron James “supervised a tournament” in which summer basketball teams from N.Y. and Chicago competed on James’ personal court in Akron. Additionally, director Brett Morgan worked with W&K, N.Y., to produce a spot under ESPN’s “Without Sports” campaign involving the Nimrods, a high-school basketball team from Michigan. The spot was turned into a TV show for the Sundance Channel, and after the ad broke, the “ensuing publicity, including a ‘Tonight Show’ segment, led to sales of almost a half million dollars in Nimrod merchandise.” Other projects in the works at WKE include one for ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and one for Coca-Cola’s Powerade. WKE CEO & Founder Bill Davenport has been “trying for a number of years to produce a Broadway play based on a Nike TV spot that featured rhythmic ball-bouncing and athletic moves” ( MADISON & VINE, 12/14 issue ).
Sponsored content
