Metro League’s players hoop from Earth to Mars
By Andrew ‘Soda’ Wadden
The Vancouver Metro League consists of many players with many different stories and backgrounds. Some have tales of playing basketball professionally. Some were legends in college hoops, and some ruled the courts while in High School. Most however, can’t claim to have Michael Jordan on their resume. For the Metro League’s Michael Smit, working alongside the MJ legacy is just another day at the office.
Smit and his team at Academy, including fresh-to-the-Metro-League Greg Washington, have been working closely with Jordan Brand for several years now, creating the digital media for Jordan Brand shoes and clothing. Academy, alongside Nike’s long time advertising partner Wieden + Kennedy and Vancouver-based marketing company Blast Radius, has come up with several different campaigns that are both product driven, but also consumer driven, with a keen sense of what matters to the consumer. Nike and Jordan Brand have always been one of the world’s top companies in understanding street culture and creating pop-culture icons out of their keen advertisements. Remember the “Bo Knows” commercials back in the early nineties with Bo Diddley and Bo Jackson? What about Spike Lee as Mars Blackmon? “Is it the shoes?” Nike and Jordan Brand are consistently keeping the consumer wanting more, thanks in part to the efforts of Smit’s Academy team and their partners.
One of Smit’s and his team’s latest campaigns for Jordan Brand featured Mars once again, but this time as you! Hard to explain so let me show you.
Jordan Brand needed an ad campaign for the release of the new colorways from their Jordan Spizike shoe series. Academy, alongside Wieden + Kennedy and Blast Radius came up with the “Become Mars” campaign that has been massively successful on both the “Become Mars” microsite and through their IPhone App .
Working this closely with the Jordan Brand has seemed at times all too surreal for Smit, but he knows that at the end of the day, Jordan is a client, and “you can’t get caught up being a fan at work”. A client who just happens to be a global icon.
Just last week Jordan Brand launched a national campaign featuring Dwyane Wade called \”Nightmares Never Sleep\”. This campaign is for the release of the Jordan 2010 shoe. The commercial was written and produced by Wieden + Kennedy and showcases Wade (Jordan Brand’s newest addition), in a horror flick style setting, where Wade becomes possessed and terrorizes his opponents as only D-Wade can. It’s a slick campaign that features one of the nicest new shoes to come out in the Jordan Brand line. It’s a great product with great advertising. On the digital side of things, Academy’s team produced several mini-games, interspersed with original video content, to put the viewer in the mind of the terrorized opponent. As the site says, the Nightmare wants your Facebook, your webcam, and your Twitter. Be careful!
Smit plays for EA Sports and is a veteran of the Vancouver Metro League. Mike believes that Vancouver direly needed a league like the VML as the outlets for quality basketball are few and far between once someone’s High School or College careers are finished. Smit’s a baller since a young kid, is now living the dream, literally. He works professionally with the Jordan Brand, Nike, and a number of other exciting clients, which in his own words is “amazing”, and recreationally getting to ball in one of Vancouver’s top basketball leagues, in his words is “pretty awesome too.” Yes it is!
For the record, the Become Mars microsite is really, really cool. Peep it out and Become Mars! I did.
Check it…
