We talk about official songs and music videos for big sporting events pretty frequently here at IMVDb. It's a relatively recent phenomenon, and they are a great example of using the power and popularity of music videos to promote something. In the sporting world, the biggest music video player by far is the FIFA World Cup, and they just released their new video for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil for a track called "We Are One (Ole Ola)" by Pitbull featuring Jennifer Lopez and Claudia Leitte.
The video, directed by frequent will.i.am/Black Eyed Peas director Ben Mor, is colorful, vibrant, and full of all the soccer highlight clips you'd expect from a video promoting the world's largest soccer event. Pitbull acts as a sort of ambassador to all things Brazil in the video, and we get the shots of the Christ The Redeemer statue out of the way pretty quickly so we can get to what Pitbull is really here to do - perform between two sexy Brazilian ladies. Lopez also performs, and Claudia Leitte lends some local star power (fun fact: there is a Brazilian version of The Voice and Leitte is a judge on it).
The previous World Cup, held in South Africa, featured a song called "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)" by Shakira and featuring South African group Freshlyground. That video is currently sitting a #7 of the most watched videos on all time online. Not bad.
If the World Cup was looking for a potent combination of artists to match or top Shakira's video, they made a good choice. Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull previously teamed up for "On The Floor", which is sitting on the most watched of all time list at #3.
On the directing side, Ben Mor makes Brazil look like one giant, really fun party in this video, keeping the many different elements in the video in balance.
FIFA clearly believes that these official songs and music videos are a key marketing tool for the World Cup, and my guess is they're investment will pay off - I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually see this video in our top 100 most popular videos of all time list sooner or later.
The video for "We Are One (Ole Ola)" was produced by Coleen Haynes for Black Dog Films. The track is available as a single now.
