Truly Deeply/Madly

A video fea­tur­ing ten­nis star Roger Fed­erer that plays on our col­lec­tive fas­ci­na­tion with “real or fake” hit the web ear­lier this week and has quickly gone viral, accu­mu­lat­ing more than 700,000 views as of this morning.

The video, which was shot at the film­ing of a Gillette com­mer­cial shoot in Switzer­land, fea­tures Fed­erer serv­ing a ten­nis ball and knock­ing a can off the head of one of the pro­duc­tion crew mem­bers – twice in a row. A Gillette spokesper­son tells Mash­able, “All we’ll say at the moment is we’ll leave the ‘real or fake’ debate up to the view­ers, but the evi­dence is there to see. Roger’s skill and abil­ity is incred­i­ble (that’s why he’s a Gillette ambas­sador!) so of course it was filmed in one take dur­ing a shoot for Gillette Fusion’s part­ner­ship with the British Skin Foundation.”

As the video goes viral and approaches 1 mil­lion views, we’ve been reflect­ing on how effec­tive celebrity/brand rela­tion­ships can be when han­dled right. To-date the high pro­file sportsman/Gillette spon­sor­ship has been fairly tra­di­tional in its exe­cu­tion, but whether by good plan­ning or good for­tune, this Fed­erer viral video takes Gillette’s brand sto­ry­telling to the next level. The debate about whether this ad is gen­uine or fake adds to its momen­tum and buzz. There seems to be a great deal of authen­tic­ity in the pro­duc­tion from the response of the crew to the ner­vous­ness of the guy being served-at. Ehether the video’s real or fake — who really cares, we love it and it’s work­ing it’s butt-off for the brand.

This post was orig­i­nally pub­lished on Mashable.com

Dave Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
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Tags: Brand Agency, Brand Design, brand designer, brand designer Melbourne, brand designers, brand endorsements, Brand Experience, Brand Identity, brand sponsorships, brand-designers-Melbourne, brand-gesture, Brand-Storytelling, brandamentalist, Creative Ideas, Dave Ansett, David Ansett, Gillette, Roger Federer

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