After charming poor kids who love to sing Lorde in his previous spot, goofy-looking Samsung spokesman Lionel Messi is back, and this time he's fleeing such shiny, sleek black cars that I thought this was an automotive ad until I saw that the Mercedes logos were blacked out.
Basically, Messi flees the cars of the Shadow Government or whoever it is, dribbling his soccer ball with amazing skill through a restaurant, across the tops of cars and elsewhere in a clever riff on the Parkour craze that has taken over everything from broadcast TV to the James Bond franchise.
R/GA and Cheil Worldwide produced this new work, and the spot is expertly shot and edited in such a way that you don't have time to think, only to watch the leaping and running and kicking. So (spoiler) the revelation of the alien spaceship at the very end is a great twist—the Shadow Government has more to worry about than Messi's rabble-rousing soccer games with street urchins, if such a thing can be believed: The fate of the world is at stake. Probably. And only soccer will help.
The only thing about this ad that bothers me a little is that it feels like something's missing from it. It's a great, brief video with a cool twist at the end, put together in a completely professional way. But it's almost as if there should be some kind of a picture, somewhere? It's obviously part of an ongoing campaign—10 other international soccer superstars will be named to Galaxy 11 in the next few weeks on Samsung Mobile's social channels and campaign microsite, theGALAXY11.com—but I want to say maybe there could be, like, a company logo? Or maybe a product of some sort, possibly even a smartphone or a tablet or a really nerdy wristwatch?
Just spitballing, here.
CREDITS
Client: Samsung
Agencies: R/GA and Cheil Worldwide
