AC Milan Brazilian midfielder Kaká scored the winning the goal against Catania only a few minutes ago. This, believe it or not, is relevant to us here at CrunchGear, for the Manchester City-bound player (if you believe the European sports pages) is Sony’s new frontman for an upcoming Bravia ad campaign. And if you’ve spent any amount of time on YouTube then you know what to expect from such a campaign: a big idea and an even bigger budget (Kaká’s no fool) leaving you wondering, “Wait, this is about TVs, right?”
That quick, shaky (sorry!) video shows you some behind-the-scenes action of the shoot in a Turin square. It also shows one Dan Magness breaking a whole bunch of keepie-uppie records. Incidentally, Turin is home to Juventus, one of AC Milan’s principal rivals.
Some explanation is in order.
The big spinny thing you see in the video is a zoetrope, which was an early device used to give the illusion of motion. The point of the campaign is to convey the idea that the Bravia’s Motionflow technology—basically, Bravia TVs run at 240Hz— eliminates the blur you’d find in TVs that operate at lesser hertz. Hence Kaká and the fast-moving sport of football as the vehicle for all 240Hz. And yeah, you read that correctly: 120Hz was this year’s TV star feature, and now Sony has doubled that number. Whether or not the human eye can see the difference between 120Hz and 240Hz, I don’t know (because you can see the difference between 60Hz and 120Hz); I do intend to call around tomorrow though, bothering doctors and researchers for that info.
What’s most interesting to me, as a sports fan, is if Kaká does leave AC Milan in the coming months—I do believe Manchester City’s owners, the Dubai royal family, are offering Milan an unlimited amount of money for the player—how would this affect the commercial? I mean, it’s not gonna be out for a few months yet, and having a Milan-clad Kaká saying sweet things about his Bravia and Motionflow can’t be ideal for Sony.