Rugby Video Ad Campaign Kicks the Pooch

In this new Australian-developed ad campaign, Electronic Arts EA Sports division has released three new television commercials promoting their EA Sports Rugby 2003 game, timed, of course, to coincide with the Rugby World Cup.

Created by EA's ad agency Magnum Opus, the trio of spots show ordinary consumers being momentarily possessed by a sudden passion for rugby, causing them to behave in decidedly odd ways, as if they were taking part in the World Cup themselves. In the first spot, a husband, bored with his wife's incessant babbling on her cell phone, looks for entertainment at the expense of his poor little dog.

The campaign is not far from the truth. Anyone who's been around any of the venues for the Rugby World Cup, swamped as they've been by rugby fanatics from all over the globe, might argue the spots are, in fact, art imitating life.