‘STAY UNGROUNDED’ SAYS BALOTELLI IN TIMELY NIKE AD

We don’t often feature Nike ads for anything other than their football boots here on Footy-Boots.com, but when our friends from Nike sent this one our way – we had to see the reaction it would get!

Call it madness or genius, either way, Nike & Foot locker have opted to release their new advert for the Nike Air Max Lunar starring Mario Balotelli less than 48 hours after the FA Cup Semi Final.

In the ad, Mario takes us on a tour of his apartment, which is full of diamonds, designer sunglasses and a presumably-lost supermodel.

The hook is that all of the above are floating around the domicile (oddly, except the supermodel), waiting for Mario to interact with them in a variety of rather cool ways – culminating in a pair of the new ultra-light Nike Air Max Lunar hovering out of his drawers with the tagline ‘Stay Ungrounded’.

Fittingly, after a face-off with fellow Nike athlete Rio Ferdinand at Wembley, people up and down the country will have had many choice words to describe the Italian striker; and grounded probably wasn’t one of them!

We can’t help but crack a wry smile at Nike’s ad department’s use of the controversial star with such an apt tagline, though we do wonder how many pairs of shoes they’ll sell with the former-Inter man’s endorsement.

It also marks the first time that Nike have used Balotelli as a ‘main man’ in one of their adverts; indicating that the American brand see potential in Balotelli as the ‘face’ of their products, which may mean Nike could lean on him to change to a newer pair of football boots, rather than relying on the outdated White/Black/Cyber CTR360 that he has played in nearly all season.

That said, we’d have to suggest to Nike that they give Balotelli some specialist training before featuring him in any more adverts, as – by our reckoning – putting on and tying up a pair of football boots is a touch harder than putting a training bib on;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpL9eQ6mm-k