WNBA Season Tip-Off Spot Featuring Phoenix Mercury Guard/Forward Diana Taurasi
With the WNBA tipping off on May 18, the WNBA's latest promo was played during the broadcast of the NBA Playoffs today.
The 30-second ad features the Phoenix Mercury's Diana Taurasi driving to the basket with a GPS-style internal monologue silently describing her actions.
Right away, what's noticeably absent is the "Expect Great" slogan that has been used in various ads of the past (click here, here, and here for more on those from 2009-2011). That's a welcome omission in my opinion - in the past few years, the league has moved from literally telling people to stop hating to simply highlighting some of the stylistic elements of the game and one of its most entertaining players in Taurasi.
The most interesting thing - and something I don't quite recall from previous WNBA ad campaigns - is that this ad was made with a similar look and feel as the NBA playoffs ads.
Rather than explicitly telling people "basketball is basketball," the ads are simply given a similar look and feel to the men's ads while not trying to emulate the action of the men's game directly and that's refreshing, in a way, for reasons described in response to a previous ad - it speaks to those who appreciate basketball rather than trying to convert those who have not yet overcome the impulse to demean women at every opportunity they get. And I don't think you can go wrong selling the league with Taurasi, one of the league's most prolific scorers and arguably among the most well-known personalities.
Naturally, the ad brought out the fieriest ire among NBA fans on Twitter, but that's to be expected of just about any WNBA ad.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on the ad? Do you think it's effective? What would even constitute effective to you?
Feel free to vote below and leave your thoughts in the comments.