thanks to the lovely emma for the pointer to this film.

if you are a fan of any niche sport – the chances are that at some point you will see a video of other people far more proficient than you are, making amazing things look easy and providing the perfect product positioning for a sponsor’s products. The latest one that I have seen is from Nike SB (skateboard). It has such high production values that even when viewed through a browser the quality of the video surpasses that of most DVDs.

The skate action is amazing but if you err on the technical side then you can see that the video quality when streamed over a fairly standard broadband line is phenomenal. Apparently Adobe helped quite a lot with this side of thigs with their new video products. Well done to them.

Is this advertising? Of a sort yes – product placement is increasingly being seen as a way to cut through the clutter of other online advertising methods. Are Nike tracking how many people buy their shoes who have also see the video? Probably, probably not. If someone watches the video and then goes straight to nikestore.com and buys then they’ll be tracked but for offline purchases the same dliemma of old media applies. How can you track someone who sees a TV, Magazine or Outdoor ad?

Increasingly big brands will give their consumers content which they want to give them a warm fuzzy feeling about the brand. Nike has been successful in doing this. Hopefully other large brands will see the possibilities and instead of holding back from pure branding exercises on the internet will get stuck in, be proud of their products and what people do with them and move on from allowing click-through-rates to be the only online measure that counts.