Nike celebrates U.S. women's soccer victory with a powerful spot: Monday Wake-Up Call

Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital news. You can get an audio version of this briefing on your Alexa device; sign up here. What people are talking about today:The USA women’s team’s victory in the FIFA World Cup made the perfect finale to America’s Fourth of July weekend. After their 2-0 victory over the Netherlands, the women, who will be celebrated with a parade in Manhattan on Wednesday, are the country’s new heroines, and Nike was quick to jump in and celebrate with a new ad. The black-and-white spot, created by Wieden & Kennedy, is titled “Never Stop Winning” and it’s a fiercely inspiring celebration not just of women's soccer but of female empowerment, with the narrator passionately predicting that women will "break every glass ceiling and have their faces carved on Mount Rushmore." One line in particular singles out Megan Rapinoe – the Golden Boot-winning star player of the tournament whose political stance has also made headlines -- predicting that: “A whole generation of girls and boys will go out and play and say things like ‘I want to be like Megan Rapinoe when I grow up.'" Rapinoe--heralded by the New York Times as the "representative athlete for our times" --and her teammates will be strongly in demand for marketers scrambling to sign new endorsements over the coming weeks. As Nike says in its tagline, “Everybody wins.” Bleacher Report deletes a soccer-related tweetNot everyone was on the money in celebrating the USWNT’s win. After the result, Bleacher Report tweeted out a piece of graphic art with the hashtag #OneNationOneTeam that immediately came under fire for picturing, as well as some of the players, random individuals seemingly unconnected to the team. They included Brad Pitt, the (Canadian) "Friends" actor Matthew Perry and the cast of “Modern Family” as well as fictional characters like Captain Marvel and Deadpool. Aside from its total randomness, the tweet also drew accusations of disrespect; as sports website Deadspin points out, “there were 23 players on the USWNT roster that went to France for this tournament, and only 15 of them are present in the graphic--never mind that coach Jill Ellis is missing.” There were also 28 men compared to 22 women in the picture. The tweet was quickly deleted, but fortunately, it was saved for posterity by Deadspin – feast your eyes in incredulity here. D-to-c brands target millennials' kidsWith more millennials becoming parents, the direct-to-consumer brands beloved of the demographic are starting to target their kids, writes Ad Age’s Ilyse Liffreing. Brands such as Rothy’s, Allbirds, Quip and Warby Parker have all brought out mini-versions of products – for example, Allbirds brought out a wool shoe line called “Smallbirds" while Quip has launched kid-friendly toothbrushes. With celebrities like Beyonce often posting photos of their kids as “mini-mes” on social, it’s a smart move for these companies to scale up their businesses. And, as Liffreing points out, while it’s not exactly new for brands to expand by catering to the kids of their core consumers (Baby Gap, anyone?) the internet means the challengers can do it with unprecedented speed to market. Just briefly:“Dump Starbucks”: Starbucks has come under fire for asking six police officers to leave a branch in Tempe, Arizona, reports the New York Times, after a customer complained their presence was making him anxious. The Tempe Officers Association subsequently posted a tweet saying “Dump Starbucks” with a mockup of a Starbucks-like logo. Record fine: British Airways is set to be fined a record £183 million ($229 million) for a data breach, reports the BBC, after hackers stole details of 500,000 customers from the airline last year. The penalty from the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office is the first since the advent of GDPR and the biggest since Facebook was fined for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. B.A. says it will contest the fine. Gates on Jobs: For years they were cast as each other’s nemesis, and now Bill Gates has spoken out about his deceased rival, Apple founder Steve Jobs, reports Bloomberg, in a segment broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” “I was like a minor wizard because he would be casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, but because I’m a minor wizard, the spells don’t work on me,” said the Microsoft founder (who has clearly been reading a lot of Harry Potter.) Just do it: Arizona governor Doug Ducey was seen wearing Nike sneakers just days after blasting the company over its controversial “Betsey Ross” shoe, according to USA Today. Ducey was photographed at a Fourth of July barbecue in the Nike tennis shoes, despite vowing to withdraw $1million in state incentives promised to Nike for opening a plant in Arizona. Campaign of the day: San Francisco small agency TBD tapped the artist Buff Monster to create a summer-inspired mural for Havaianas, writes Ad Age’s Ann-Christine Diaz, as part of the Brazilian flip-flop brand’s marketing push to help raise awareness in the U.S. But this is no ordinary mural–consumers can also “shop” direct from the mural, using their phone and Google Vision A.I. technology. The campaign will also include a music video incorporating scenes from the activation. Hear more from TBD at Ad Age's Small Agency Conference & Awards July 30-31 in New Orleans. 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Nike celebrates U.S. women's soccer victory with a powerful spot: Monday Wake-Up Call

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