Adidas Chinese Adverts

In each and every country in which they sell their products, global organisations have to be very careful to change their advertising message in order to attract the local market.  With China becoming one, if not the biggest, consumer of sports goods globally then companies like Adidas have had to change the way that they do things.

For instance, if you have a look at the top video featuring Chinese defender and midfielder Zheng Zhi.  The Shenyang born star who has played for Celtic and Charlton Athletic is seen in a number of what you might call patriotic poses.  The video, as well as his monologue that goes with it, stresses the importance of the Chinese Republic and the people in his career and the video shows them, in animated form, helping him to score.

Together with the nation rather than for individual triumph was the key to this clever campaign.  Buy Adidas and be a good communist all at the same time.  Clever, subtle and highly targeted advertising.


It is exactly the same with the video above featuring Zhi again as well as a number of other notable Chinese athletes.  Again, the emphasis is very much on the mass of the Chinese people helping these sports stars to victory over the others.

Individual achievement is carefully underpinned but also undermined in as much as the responsibility for success is handed over to the Chinese people who as good communists subvert their own identity to the good of the many over the individual aspirations of the one.  Or at least that's how it goes if you are feeling generous and not in the least cynical.

The final video which was made for the 2010 Olympics and only shown in China features the enigmatic diver Hu Jia.  Notice how Adidas subtly change the message of their slogan Impossible is Nothing to suit the market.  Again, Jia is helped in his ascent to the top of the diving game by the Chinese people who, in ghostly animated form, literally give their bodies over to him as a platform from which to raise the country's sporting profile.

No one ever said it would be easy - the marriage of rampant commercialism with Chinese communism.  However, Adidas is one of those brands who have carefully thought about their positioning in the market there and acted accordingly.  As each and every TV ad must be approved by central government, their shift in terms of their advertising from the pursuit of individual glory to collective achievement is subtle and well done.

World Cup Failure Should Lead to Reform at Home

It seemed as if the whole of the UK lifted its arms in unison in a WTF expression, part bewilderment, part resignation.  The brutal fact was that the World Cup would not be coming home in 2018.

Neither will it be in 2026 – people have already been told not to hold their breath for that tournament.  That great bastion of democracy, China, has already been earmarked to host that event, or so it seems.

It looks very much as if England might not host the tournament until the ten year olds who cried themselves to sleep the other day have ten year olds of their own – and only then if we are lucky.

Yes, there was great gnashing of teeth and not only because of the cold snap that had overtaken the island nation.  How could we have failed?  The real question should be how could we have won?

People point at the revelations in The Times and on the BBC investigative show Panorama.  Many are saying that had these revelations about FIFA not been made then the UK may have won the bid.

I find that naive in the extreme.  The die was cast a long time before.  If anything, the decision to go ahead with the disclosures now looks to me like a great big traditional (yet prescient) finger up to FIFA. So, well done The  Times and the BBC.

As for the winning countries.  Oh dear.  Yes, Russia is now known around the world for its corrupt political system, in fact it led one British tabloid to infer that it was simply one mafia style organisation handing over a prize to a mafia style government.  Yes, Qatar has no real history of football and only one football stadium.  But it does have a world class record for ignoring the rights of its inhabitants and the guest workers who live and toil there.

Perhaps FIFA were thinking along the same terms as the people of the Olympic Committee who awarded the Olympic Games to Germany in 1936.  Who can possibly say what was going on in their minds?

To be frank, I don't give a flying f**k through a rolling donut about who is hosting the games.  So, the two countries who will host the World Cup are not perfect.  Yet, instead of pointing fingers, what people should really be doing is looking at the parlous state of soccer in the land of its modern birth.

Let’s take a look at how British football got in to the parlous state it is in now.  Over the last twenty years or so most of the top English clubs have been taken over by millionaires and billionaires whose roots are anything but British.  The clubs are treated like the playthings of the rich (which of course they are) and then thrown out of the pram when the next bright shiny new toy comes along.

Clubs up and down the UK have watched in bewilderment as their grounds have been sold off and the money grabbed by a bunch of anonymous carpet baggers.  Even the most successful of all the clubs have enormous debts which could well threaten their existence if their financial plug is pulled by those to whom they owe the money.

The media see football as just another form of reality TV and concentrate on the private lives of the players instead of provoking and promoting serious debate about the sport itself.  When the premiership is on the media coverage is at saturation point – as if every single British passport holder must be obsessed with the game (talk to my mother – you will find they are not).

Last of all the players.  Overpaid and spoiled they are at the vanguard of the media frenzy when it suits them and bleating like children when it doesn’t go their own way. Their vast wealth enables them to make morally ambiguous turnarounds without the whiff of introspection.  Their self delusional over inflated opinion of themselves means they have even attempted to stifle free speech with enormously expensive court injunctions.

The traditional values of the game (a cheap way of entertainment, a good day or night out, and so on) are gone.  Television has demanded that the sport twist and turn itself in to something unrecognizable to fit in to schedules.  The fantasy has gone – as has the community spirit.

Most of the kids I see around the streets wear Manchester United kits and profess to follow that team, despite being around two hundred miles away from Old Trafford.  I suspect sometimes that they have not even heard of the clubs whose grounds are spitting distance from their homes.

The prices have evolved with the game so that you need to take out a second mortgage to afford a season ticket.  So, instead of going to matches supporters cheer from their armchairs.  The problem there is that they usually have to buy subscriptions for that – so more money is put in to the pockets of the likes of Rupert Murdoch.

This, in a vicious circle, further drives the very exploitation of the sport that is destroying it.

There are a lot of things wrong with Russia and Qatar, both as countries and as venues for the tournament.  If England had won this bid it would have perhaps made it look (to us) as if everything was fine with soccer here.  It would have been a exoneration of the culture of celebrity, commercial exploitation, foreign investment and disregard for ordinary fans which has wrecked the beautiful game.

At least with the World Cup elsewhere, we will at least undergo our four-yearly humiliation very, very far from home.

Image Credits

Catarrh
Russia

The History of Football

  By Billy Adams, WiS Scotland Correspondent

The first notable point when considering the history of football is that various forms have been played for thousands of years and due to this there could be an ever-lasting argument as to who created the first form due to poor record keeping and depreciation of documents.

However, rather then get dragged down in to who did what first, the focus should be on how we have the versions of football and in this instance soccer that we have today.  Next we must consider what elements our predecessors games had that could relate to our versions of football based games, which mainly are British football aka soccer, American football and rugby while there are also other noteworthy versions such as Gallic football.

Episkyros (Greece) 2000BC

Around 2000 BC, The Greeks developed a kicking/throwing game, called Episkyros.

It could be said that in this marble we can see many resemblances to the modern games of football.

We can see the man with the ball balancingit in much the same way modern player do.  This shows technical ability, a vital skill within soccer.

Also, consider that the younger male is looking up to the player. This shows one of two things - it could be that the player is teaching the younger male in the sport. It may also be that the boy is looking up to they player as an idol in a similar way to many males who hero worship footballers in modern times.


Cuju (China) 500BC

Cuju means "kick the ball with foot. It was a popular sport played by ancient Chinese

This game was played by both the public and the military. It was used in the military to help leg numbness from horse riding.

This game is based on kicking a small ball into a hole in a net.

This practise is still maintained to this day.  We see it often in the western world as a soccer training practise. We have both small sized footballs and goals with solid fronts with just a few small holes to aim at (much like a cuju goal) are sold most high streets in the UK. It could be said that this is the closest old sport to football.

It would seem that FIFA would agree with that statement as on July 15, 2004, Mr. Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA declared to the world at the Third China International Football Exposition that football originated from China.  Thus Linzi in Zibo of Shandong Province was officially recognized as the birthplace of football.