Page 191 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

180 • Sport, Media and Society

To a sunny, Latinesque tune played on guitar, flute and bass, three soccer players,
Kaká (Brazil), Gerrard (UK) and Messi (Argentina), were shown drawing stick fi g-
ures of themselves on the brown cardboard interior of an Adidas shoebox. The stick

figures became animated and addressed themselves to the camera, extolling their vir-
tues as team players. For example, Gerrard stressed his power, Kaká his elegance and

Messi his flair. The sequence ended with the figures of Kaká and Messi displaying
fancy footwork, passing the ball between themselves, while Gerrard waited, yawning
and hitching up his line-drawn sock before saying, ‘Just gimme the ball mate!’ and
kicking it out of the box. The nonhierarchical counterpoint of the three instruments

in the audio track echoed the final sentiment of the sequence, as the words find your
place in the team were displayed inside the empty shoebox.
This sequence was by far the most commonly found sequence on all of the differ-
ent Adidas national sites, varying only by the language of translation in the subtitles
that accompanied the spoken words of the players. Of the Web sites that did not
show this sequence, the US site and the Korean site showed sequences unique to
them, while the sites for Brazil, Taiwan, China and Canada (French) showed a
sequence featuring items from the Adidas running range. To the thick, squeaky sound
of an acoustic guitar, the sequence displayed shoes and clothing circled by felt-tip
pen marks, the names of the products appearing as if pinned to a board with thumb-
tacks. As the audio cross-faded to filtered beats and synthesised sounds, the sequence

ended with an image of a woman running, an arrow drawn by pen connecting the
products to the woman.

A Site for All Nations: the Many Faces of Adidas

On the home page of the Brazilian site, a hyperlink took users to an animated land-
scape of Rio with a road race marked out. By following the links further into the
hypernarrative from the other national home pages showing this sequence, the user
arrived at the Adidas running site. This site described the clothes and shoes as hav-
ing been developed through a process of Formation (which was trademarked). The
font used gave the impression of handwriting on parchment paper (a wax seal was
part of the design). Digital images of the products bounced when the cursor rolled
over them to reveal handwriting like a scientist’s notes in old-fashioned technical
drawings. The overall impression combined the comfort of classic physics (catego-
ries describing the shoes were drawn from Newton’s three laws of thermodynamics)
with cutting-edge technology in the interactive graphics. The trendy acoustic guitar
and synthesised sounds of the audio track in the home page sequence echoed this
classic–contemporary feel.
The US site showed a sequence featuring Reggie Bush, National Football League
running back for the New Orleans Saints. Making connections with the soccer nar-
rative on the majority of other national sites, Bush is shown drawing a stick fi gure
of himself trapped in a maze, extolling the importance of patience. The Korean site