Ian Darke will serve as
ESPN's lead announcer for the World Cup this summer in Brazil, and the net has created a new ad campaign promoting the event in which Darke is "spoofing his style by describing the heated action at an awkward blind date at a restaurant," according to Richard Sandomir of the N.Y. TIMES. Darke begins his commentary "while sitting on a bar stool, then rises to stand beside the actors playing 'Jim' and 'Stacey' before he sits between them at the table." He calls the action "in the parlance of a soccer match, his voice rising and falling with the encounter's ebbs and flows." The video was posted on YouTube April 1 and "has been viewed more than 445,000 times." Raising Darke's profile was an "internal project" for
ESPN and separate from the "Every 4 Years" World Cup campaign the net is running via Wieden & Kennedy. The Darke video was "meant to be distributed digitally, specifically for
ESPNFC.com," but with the "expectations that it would become social media fodder on Facebook and Twitter."
ESPN Senior VP/Marketing Aaron Taylor: "It was an opportunity to create a supplemental message that we could advance behind a marketing initiative." Sandomir notes
ESPN Marketing Manager Brendan Gillen initially thought of using Darke "at a fast-food drive-through, a gas station, a coin laundry or a bank ATM." He also thought of making a mockumentary where Darke would "give the play-by-play of a person's entire day." But Taylor said the first date concept "seemed fun, contemporary and charming" (
N.Y. TIMES, 4/15).
