Claro’s World Cup Ad Inspires Whatever The Score

Sporting events are a wonderful opportunity for emotional ads, as System1’s new “The Sport Dividend” report with FUSE shows. But for brands celebrating a national team, sporting events are also a risk. Your ad’s effectiveness is something you can control. The team’s effectiveness isn’t. How do you make a sports ad “results-proof”? This Claro commercial from Brazil offers some answers.

After a draw with Jamaica put them out of the competition, is it any consolation for fans of the Selecao that Brazil has brought us one of the best Women’s World Cup ads? Probably not, if we’re honest! But it’s true nonetheless – telecoms brand Claro’s celebratory commercial is a 4-Star ad with the general Brazilian audience. That’s an excellent Test Your Ad score for a football ad. The high score alone should help the ad stay effective now Brazil’s World Cup is over, but the secret to that strong performance lies in how the ad widens its scope to be about more than the tournament, or even football.

As is often the case with Brazilian ads, music plays a big role in Claro’s success. The soundtrack to this ad is a new arrangement of “Maria Maria”, Milton Nascimento’s 70s anthem for female empowerment. “Maria” is the most common female name in Brazil – Nascimento’s own mother was one of the millions of Marias across the country. The song, and Claro’s ad, take that even further, making “Maria” stand for all women in their struggles at work and home for equality and respect.

At the end of the ad Claro makes this explicit, calling the film a homage to “all Marias”. The music here isn’t just a nostalgic soundtrack, it’s a way of widening the ad’s emotional resonance beyond football. Even if the visuals are dominated by images of women and girls playing the joga bonito and celebrating together, the music adds an extra layer of meaning.

It’s also worth noting how inclusive the ad is. Brazil’s team includes iconic players like Marta, and it would have been easy to make an ad focusing on the team themselves. But instead Claro celebrate the culture around the game – the team bonding, the face painting, the mother-and-daughter fans. It’s a love letter to the resilience, strength and power of women’s football on and off the pitch. It also means that there are a lot of very human moments of togetherness all through the ad, which increases effectiveness and emotional impact.

Claro’s ad was made for the 2023 World Cup, but by broadening its scope to take in women’s football in general – and beyond that, women’s empowerment in general – Claro have successfully “results-proofed” the ad and can expect its effectiveness to endure despite Brazil’s defeat. After all, there will always be another tournament – women’s strength is forever.