Nike Most Valuable Puppets Santa/Reindeer Ads

This aired yesterday during (and before) the big Lakers-Cavs Kobe-LeBrawn showdown.

It was preceded by this: Episode 4 in the Most Valuable Puppets (MVPs) series for this season.

So much right about these.

The puppets, which proved to be popular, if ill-fated during last year’s NBA Playoffs—LeBron didn’t make it to the Finals—the lyrics, the length, the cultural references that help us Gen-Y kids play along, the episodic nature of them all, and even the choices of KRS-1 (oldest of the old-school) as Santa and Lupe Fiasco (known sneaker junkie and nerdy rapper from Chicago) to take the place of a rapping Blitzen…it’s all pretty ace.

That said, I have some thoughts.

I had a bit of a hard time finding the quality embeds of these videos that wouldn’t disappear from the ether after I posted them here. It happened once with the Hyperizin’ ad that I posted before, which dismayed me a bit, and I wonder why there isn’t a link from this Nike Basketball MVPs page to their YouTube channel. That seems to be an enormous, idiotic omission from the page.

Note the lack of deep-linking to the episodes here, and the lack of a link to a place where I can share these videos.

If a video asset gets me to go online, SEND ME TO A PLACE WHERE I CAN GET (AND SHARE) MORE VIDEO. I’m going online to find a copy that I can watch again—essential for a two-minute-long ad—and to find an easy way to share something with my friends. They do have a link to a page that hocks their character’s tweets (not directly to Twitter, of course), but for me, this is a fail.

I don’t want to follow Lil’ Dez on Twitter, I want more video.

So, Nike/Wieden: keep up the awesome traditional work. But help me share your great work with my friends, yeah? Thanks.

May I offer another post?

• August 6, 2009 — Ice Cube, Nike, Details (0)
• August 12, 2009 — Hyperizin’ (2)
• April 1, 2010 — Nike Air Secrets Revealed (0)