Powerade
Powerade is a sports drink made by the Coca Cola company as a competitor to Gatorade. In 2009, Powerade ran a series of ads in Great Britain featuring naked British athletes. The two ads above have inserts showing the athletes as machines, and the nudity is completely or partially hidden.
But another series of ads showed the athletes without inserts or text blocking the image. This is rugby player Paul Sackey. The small print says "Sports drink of the WRU" (Welsh Rugby Union), which is odd because Sackey belonged to the English RFU (Rugby Football Union), not the WRU.
Here's rugby player Shane Williams, with the same small print "Sports drink of the WRU." Williams is Welsh, and he did belong to the WRU. Click on the image to see a larger version.
Gregor Tait is a Scottish swimmer who competed for Great Britain in the Olympics and set a record for men's backstroke in the 2006 Commonwealth Games. The small print here says "Sports drink of Team GB."
Phillips Idowu is a triple jumper who represented Great Britain in the Olympics and won the World Championship in 2009 in Berlin. Again, the small print says "Sports drink of Team GB."
Steve Borthwick is an English rugby player, active from 1998 to 2014. The small print says "Sports drink of the RFU" (Rugby Football Union).
We end with another ad featuring Steve Borthwick. Click on the image to see a larger version.
4 comments:
Great photos. Just one more example that buff male athletes should be required to perform completely nude.
I doubt we'll ever see the likes of these ads over here.
I didn't know of this adds campaign, but again I do not live in the UK (an old fantasy of mine, though).
These are beautiful pictures. Possibly because the photographer did not intend to make them fully idealistic, leaving room for a bit of crudeness of sorts, like a will to make the captured postures come first.
If I were a sculptor the last picture of Steve Borthwick would most certainly inspire me. Actually, they would all make perfect models, among others, for a supersized bas-relief at a large city's sports arena. Must be the Art-Deco lover in me speaking :-)
Ads are lies
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