How Espn Scored U2 For Fifa World Cup Soccer Promos

Bathgate66

How ESPN Scored U2 for Cup Promos
(Multichannel News) _ Staff

U2 will be on stage with The Walt Disney Co. networks' coverage of
the world's biggest sporting event. The Irish rockers are lending
songs and band members are supplying voiceovers to five promo ads
touting ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC's coverage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
The quartet also will appear on shoulder programming for the month-
long soccer tournament, which kicks off in Germany on June 9.

Tim Scanlan, senior coordinating producer for ESPN's World Cup
coverage, said it started when he envisioned U2 song "City of
Blinding Lights" as the background for a tournament wrap-up piece.
"The song was written for New York, but I could see Berlin," Scanlan
told The Wire, referring to the site of the July 9 final. Contact was
made with the group and ideas sprang for the event's promotional
campaign executed by Weiden & Kennedy around the theme "One Game
Changes Everything" and ancillary programming.

"They're the biggest band in the world and this is the biggest
sporting event," Scanlan explained after a press conference last
Thursday in Manhattan discussing Disney's World Cup broadcast plans.
"They like how it fits with their image. They love the World Cup."

U2's "Beautiful Day," it should be noted, became the theme song for
NBC's coverage of the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney.

High-definition footage of U2 concerts from New York, North Carolina,
Chicago and Milan will be dropped into the studio show World Cup
Live , which will air daily during the tournament.

Bono and company will advise on songs used to complement action
during the tournament.

brhf9

any links for those promos?

Bathgate66

took me a short while to find them

it might not let you view it in its entirety, , unless you're a member
( I am )

http://www.u2.com/news/index.php?mode=full&news_id=1941


One Game Changes Everything’

‘It’s a simple thing – just a ball and a goal,’ explains Bono. ‘Every four years in June, ‘ adds Edge. “Sick days increase by 300%’. What’s it all about ? U2 are set to bring the football World Cup alive to millions of Americans in a multi-media initiative between World Cup organizers FIFA and the broadcasters ESPN Inc. and ABC Sports.

The band’s songs, live performance and voiceovers are all part of the “One Game Changes Everything” campaign while City of Blinding Lights is to become ESPN’s official World Cup Song.

“Our goal is to make World Cup soccer meaningful and relevant to American sports fans,” said Katie Lacey at ESPN. “We show the passion that fans around the world have through compelling stories that are set to the music of U2.’

At U2.Com we have the clips for you * beautifully shot by the way - and
we'll be keeping you updated as the campaign comes together with the opening
match of the World Cup just weeks away.

As Bono puts it in one of the spots, 'If history means anything, the world
as we know it, is about to change!'



City Of Blinding Lights / BONO

http://www.u2.com/secure/video/media/PHPSESSID=3f2b20dadc1da3d85965ecc28e6d045b/w_H_anthem.wmv


Where The Streets Have No Name / BONO

http://www.u2.com/secure/video/media/PHPSESSID=3f2b20dadc1da3d85965ecc28e6d045b/w_H_ivorycoast.wmv


I Will Follow / ADAM
http://www.u2.com/secure/video/media/PHPSESSID=3f2b20dadc1da3d85965ecc28e6d045b/w_H_tartanarmy.wmv


Beautiful Day / EDGE

http://www.u2.com/secure/video/media/PHPSESSID=3f2b20dadc1da3d85965ecc28e6d045b/w_H_sickdays.wmv

hope they work

& enjoy !

Bathgate66

apologies

double post

Bathgate66

U2 Is Giving a Voice to ESPN's Coverage

By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: June 8, 2006

For its extensive coverage of the World Cup, which begins tomorrow,
ESPN felt it needed more than its announcers and more than its game
coverage to convey the enormousness of the event to casual fans.

From now until its conclusion on July 9, Jeff Z. Klein, Robert Mackey
and other staff members of The Times and International Herald Tribune
will track the world's most popular sporting event.

It needed a voice. It wanted U2.

"Our biggest fear," said Seth Ader, senior director of ESPN Marketing,
"was we would create this beautiful campaign on paper, and they'd say:
'We don't do this kind of thing. We don't need it. We don't need the
money.' "

The idea was to license U2 songs and concert footage for highlights and
promotional ads (which the band members would narrate), as a merger of
the astonishingly popular World Cup and the enduringly popular rockers.

"If it was just a music deal, it would have been like any other
campaign to pay for their music," Ader said, describing the role of the
band in providing the voice-overs of the ads as crucial. "We wanted
them to be a part of it."

U2 had never done precisely what ESPN envisioned, but the band has not
been shy about exploiting its music. It has licensed its songs to films
and the English Premier League, has performed at halftime of the Super
Bowl and has gone into business with Apple to create the iPod U2
Special Edition.

But the band was smitten with ESPN's plans, in part because all four of
its members are soccer fans from Ireland, and the global scope of the
World Cup appeals to their well-known charitable endeavors, especially
in Africa.

"There's something wonderfully democratic about soccer," Paul
McGuinness, U2's manager, said yesterday from his home in London. "It's
the cheapest game in the world. All you need is a ball, and boys and
girls can play it. Not that we're zealots, but we feel that soccer is a
good thing, so our association with it is a good one."

During a flight last February from Los Angeles to a concert in Mexico,
Bono grabbed the scripts for the five promotional spots, written by
ESPN's ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy, out of McGuinness's hands and acted
out each one for his bandmates, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen
Jr.

"That's when we knew this was a big deal to them," Ader said, recalling
his reaction when McGuinness related the story.

Viewers have seen the five spots, which depict various tableaux set to
U2 songs. A montage of children playing soccer around the world is set
to "City of Blinding Lights." A second, about rampant yet widely
sanctioned absenteeism during World Cup games, is punctuated by
"Beautiful Day."

A gleeful one showing the Tartan Army of fans of Scotland (whose team
did not qualify for the World Cup) dancing in Edinburgh's streets, is
backed by "I Will Follow." And one about the Ivory Coast's qualifying
for the first time is supported by "Where the Streets Have No Name."

McGuinness said the Ivory Coast ad "hit the nail on the head" for the
band, "and resonated immediately." In it, visions of feuding factions
in the country's war give way to a crowd of well-wishers cheering for
their team as it prepared to board the flight to Germany for the World
Cup.

"After three years of civil war, feuding factions talked for the first
time in years," Bono said in his voice-over, "and the president called
a truce because the Ivory Coast qualified for its first-ever World
Cup."

But the peace is tenuous; Human Rights Watch has reported that
government forces, militia groups and rebels committed human-rights
abuses "with impunity" against citizens from last November through
March. More than 7,000 United Nations peacekeepers are trying to help
reunite the Ivory Coast.

The Web site deadspin.com suggested that Bono might be rooting for the
Ivory Coast for reasons beyond his humanitarian work in Africa; its
flag is a mirror image of Ireland's. (Ireland did not qualify for the
World Cup.)

During the World Cup, viewers of games on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC will see
most packages of highlights accompanied by U2 music, whether recorded
in a studio or on a concert stage. As part of its deal with the band,
ESPN has the rights to 11 songs.

"We have confidence in the creative people running this campaign,"
McGuinness said. "It's great to feel comfortable with the people
essentially chopping up our songs and putting them to other uses."

Being the musical centerpiece of ESPN's World Cup coverage is the type
of exposure that U2 craves.

"With record companies decreasingly able to spend money on paid
advertising, these kinds of hookups are more attractive," McGuinness
said. He said the band's compensation from ESPN was "nothing
extraordinary, but we did get paid."

rhinomagic

I, for one, think it's brilliant and I hope it accomplishes the purpose of turning Americans on to the passion of World Cup soccer.

.

gabers

rhinomagic wrote:

I, for one, think it's brilliant and I hope it accomplishes the purpose of turning Americans on to the passion of World Cup soccer.

.

I think that the types that are big U2 fans tend to be World Cup fans already. I know I am! As for turning on most Americans to soccer, they should have got 50 Cent or Toby Keith. I can just see it now, using that whole "we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way" line for a soccer commercial. You'd get a bunch of the mouth breathers watching the world cup then!

markymark550

gabers wrote:

I can just see it now, using that whole "we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way" line for a soccer commercial. You'd get a bunch of the mouth breathers watching the world cup then!

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
They'd also have to paint the goal and ball red, white, and blue.

Pearls&Stones

Personally, I really enjoy these commercials. Not a soccer fan, but I love U2