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ADIDAS' WORLD CUP SHUTOUT

U.S. fans of soccer's big event will see only Adidas ads on television. Nike's response: A MySpace-style site for soccer nuts

In new Adidas TV, U.S. soccer star Pablo Mastroeni and Mexican soccer standout Jaime Lozano have three hours to recruit amateur players from the streets and beaches of Los Angeles. Their goal is to form one team of U.S. players and one team of Mexican born players to square off in a sandlot soccer game. The ad, one in a series, is meant to capture the high-octane international rivalries that will erupt starting on June 9, the kick-off of FIFA World Cup Soccer. But all that competitive tension is nothing compared with how the company behind the ads, Adidas Group, feels about soccer when it comes to its nemesis, Nike Inc.

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Business Week

REEBOK LAUNCHES WEB SITE FOR U.S. HISPANIC MARKET

Extends Promotional Relationship With Mexican Soccer Team Chivas
By Laurel Wentz, AD AGE

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Within a month of striking a deal last year with Mexican soccer team Chivas to launch an official product line in Mexico backed by an ad campaign there, Reebok started getting calls from U.S. Hispanics asking where they could buy the Chivas soccer jerseys.
The new BarrioRBK Web site emphasizes Spanglish and music as it aims at young Latinos.

"We said, 'Let's bring the products to the U.S. and do a campaign,'" said Jorge Dionne, Reebok's marketing director for Latin America and, since the end of last year, U.S. Hispanic.

Chivas relationship
That happened last fall, and now Reebok is further targeting the U.S. Hispanic market with Barrio RBK, its first Web site for young Latinos (www.barriorbk.com). The site is in catchy Spanglish, and leverages the international relationship with Chivas and the already urban feel of the general market site, rbk.com. The heavy emphasis on music, through online Radio RBK, is channeled into reggaeton on the Hispanic site. And Reebok's "I Am What I Am" general market RBK campaign from ad agency McGarry Bowen, New York, features a growing number of Latinos, from Chivas goalie Oswaldo Sanchez to actor John Leguizamo. All those ads appear on the site.

"We'll keep looking for people who resonate with Hispanic consumers," Mr. Dionne said. And from now on, all ads relevant to Hispanics will be tagged with the Web site address, he said.

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http://www.adage.com/

HOW WOULD YOU CHANGE THE 'NEW YORK TIMES'?

Four Top Designers Rethink the Grey Lady
By Jonah Bloom

"The New York Times will never become a tabloid,” its proprietor, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., told the World Association of Newspapers congress in Seoul, South Korea, this June. Not his first slap at modern newspaper trends: He has also gone on record calling quick-read tabs like Metro and youth-oriented newspaper offspring like Red Eye and Red Streak “condescending” and “bullshit.”

Subway rider format
The journalist in me admires such devotion to longer stories, words over graphics and nuance over quick hits. The Sunday lounger in me loves him and his team for entertaining and enlightening me with that weighty load of pages that hits my doorstep at the weekend. But the subway rider in me envies the Metro and AM New York consumers who have taken over my car. While they flick easily, I wrestle with sections and jumps, battle inky fingers, retrieve escapee inserts from grimy corners and practice an origami-cum-yoga routine that involves fitting my paper around my fellow passengers.

In an age of mobile wireless communication, RSS feeds, podcasts, on-demand TV viewing and ever-multiplying information and entertainment options, how long will I, and others like me, put up with the multi-section-broadsheet experience? Already I’m shifting to reading my NYT entirely online.

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http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=45979