During this summer's World Cup, Adidas rolled out "The Dream," a spot featuring premium soccer talent doing otherworldly things on the pitch. It also featured an unreleased song by Kanye West, and thanks to the song, "The Dream" took off across the internet, piling up more than 39 million views on YouTube and prompting a steady stream of inquiries.
To most agency execs, securing new, unreleased music from one of
the world's biggest artists would have been a major coup. But Guia
Iacomin, the music director at TBWAChiatDay who worked on the campaign, was
mostly just dismayed that Adidas didn't tap a lesser-known artist.
Ms. Iacomin had been part of a team to present emerging Brazilian
artists for the marketer's consideration.
"The client wanted to be associated with a huge name," she
sighed.