The Nets marketing campaigns in the Brooklyn era have always leaned on the local feel. Consider it the four stages of living in the borough: meeting your landlord (Hello Brooklyn), finally putting your couch in the right place (We’re In), finally learning the name of the guy who runs your local bodega (We Are).
The fourth stage comes this year: “Represent Brooklyn,” which is when you wear your first Brooklyn hat to a block party. (Don’t think we forgot “BoneGoal,” which is the moment when you finally get your first Tinder match in Williamsburg.)
The team released the campaign in the form of a two-minute video on their official website.
Though the intro looks like the trailer for a bad action movie, from “generic shot of the skyline” to “guitar kicks in on the polluting smokestack”, the entirety of “Represent Brooklyn” video is pretty cool. It’s intentionally understated: there are no shots of players or fans looking directly into the camera, and the wordless two-minute promo shoots most of its scenes from behind, to give the sense of looking forward. Even shots directly of people or players are taken from an outsider’s perspective. It hits all the right local notes, from Coney Island to the Brooklyn Bridge to the Comandante Biggie mural and back, and intersperses those shots with Nets gear and players.
The message is pretty clear: the Nets are not about individuals anymore. The franchise built its brand on the backs of their star talents, and when those fizzled, there was nothing left to look at. There are no bombastic declarations, no in-your-face screams or intimidating camera staredowns. There’s just a team and its fanbase, trying to move on from an era that didn’t quite go as planned.
