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The Street
The Street
Colin Salao

World Cup Ad Features Powerful Twist That Has Sports World Amazed

France fell just short of repeating as World Cup champions last December, but the country is once again creating promos for its national soccer team.

The Women’s World Cup kicks off on Thursday, July 20, and French telecommunications brand Orange (ORAN) -) launched an ad to try to garner support for their women’s team at the same level that their men’s team enjoys.

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The ad starts by showing some of the best highlights of the men’s team, Les Bleus, including Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann. This is mixed in with clips of the celebrations of the French people to the success of the 2018 World Cup winners.

And then ... well, hold on. No spoilers. Go watch the ad first. 

Whoa! It was hard to see that coming.

As you just saw, the major twist occurs about midway through the less than two-minute ad. 

To review: the screen turns black and shows text.

“Only Les Blues can give us these emotions,” the screen reads. “But that’s not them you’ve just seen.”

The ad then rewinds to show that the clips were all edited, and the impressive highlights were actually done by members of the women’s national team.

The ad quickly illustrates how visual effects were simply added to trick the viewer, revealing that Griezman’s tricky move was actually performed by Sakina Karchaoui, and Mbappé’s goal was really scored by Estelle Cascarino.

It’s a sneaky and smart way to show that many of the impressive athletic moves that we're floored by are performed by both men and women.

And the internet has been set ablaze by the ad.

Sports business analyst Joe Pompliano called it “one of the best sports ads” he’s ever seen.

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