The phrase "injury jinx" is frequently bandied about in the European sports press, generally as a convenient summation of the reasons why a soccer player has been sidelined. Whether or not an athlete's boot is to blame for his blisters or broken metatarsals is often a secondary, but ongoing, debate. It's also at the forefront of an anti-hype campaign by athletic brand Nomis.

To carve out part of the soccer market for the relatively-new Australian sportswear brand, Johannes Leonardo - the upstart WPP-backed New York agency founded by ex-Saatchi & Saatchi creatives Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico - concocted a campaign that implores consumers to "Ask Your Feet" before buying. The idea is to demsytify the hype around celebrity endorsements and emphasize product quality.

"If you've got equipment that's not necessarily right for you, over the course of a game it'll affect your performance and over the course of many games it'll affect your career," says JL co-founder Leo Premutico. "This film compresses time - we were intrigued with the cumulative effect of these little injuries and the big effect they can have on your dream."

Ex-adidas VP Simon Skirrow founded Nomis ("Simon" spelled backward) in 2004, frustrated by the athletic world's obsession with ever-lighter sneakers. After helping launch adidas' popular "Predator" in the '90s, he went to Australia and reclusively designed his own line of football boots made from kangaroo and bovine leather. He believes his product better balances the consumer's desire for a light shoe with the athlete's need for comfort and support.

To pitch the shoes to an international audience of young, aspiring footballers, the agency decided concept stores and a web film made better strategic sense than a specifically-targeted TV spot. Jacobs and Premutico sent a script for an animated web film spanning 15 years in the life of a soccer player to London-based Nexus Productions, hoping the company would find a suitable candidate for the job on its roster. Director Joji Koyama (aka Woof Wan-Bau) pleasantly surprised JL by sending back a live-action treatment.

"The injury prevention angle allowed the spot to have a story, so it gave me a container to put little ideas into, rather than just shooting something and making it look appealing," says Koyama. "The original script had an over-the-top, wacky cartoon feel, and I thought that it might come across better if we did it live action and applied an over-the-top theatricality to it."

Clocking in at 2:15, the spot features a young, Goldilocked footballer who boards a giant gold boot and watches as a series of tableaux depicting his own, apparently tragic, life story pass by - from winning a trophy and brand endorsements to sustaining a foot injury and losing it all. Think Ebenezer Scrooge peering into the future via the Disney World ride "It's A Small World".

Koyama worked closely with his regular art director James Hatt and costume designer Emma MacFarlane assembling a huge arsenal of props in advance of the shoot in a London studio. Though the limited time and budget didn't allow for rehearsals and advance set-ups (making for a hectic two-day production schedule), the lack of time restrictions on the length of the final film made the experience more rewarding creatively for Koyama.

"We shot knowing that it could be as long as needed," he says. "This made the process more intuitive and fluid. We prepared a 3D animatic as a guide for the crew, so we followed some prepared timings, but because we did almost everything in-camera, we adapted timings on set.

"Jan and Leo let me flesh things out and add little details," he adds. "We worked pretty closely in terms of each little idea. The process was very conducive to adding playful ideas as we went along."

The creative team wanted the spot's music to have a British flavor, and gave Amber Music's composers a lot of leeway to re-imagine the royalty-free anatomical anthem "Dem Bones" that would ramble over Koyama's meandering visuals.

On the soundtrack, a sneering vocalist with a thick British accent riffs on the "Dem Bones" children's song to connect branded footwear and injuries: "The sponsorship's connected to endorsements/The endorsement's connected to the logo/ And the logo is connected to the boot/ And the boot is connected to the friction/ And the friction is connected to the blister..."

The aforementioned sneering Brit singer is in fact Phillip Mossman, a veteran of the British rock scene, who improvised the lyrics and nailed the tune in a single go. "He was in a bit of a funny mood that morning," remembers Amber producer Patrick Oliver. "Kind of like an angry Michael Caine."

Amber composer Will Bates turned around the track in less than 24 hours. The saxophone player spent an evening "farting about" in the studio, recording loads of horns and baritone saxes and then mangling and chopping the sounds to create a bouncy melody. Bates is so happy with the track he's extended "Damn Boots" and is hoping to make it downloadable via iTunes.

"They'd shot a lot by the time it came to us," says Bates. "Making sure the lyrics corresponded with what was happening on the screen was trickier, but everything seemed to fall into place really easily."

Johannes Leonardo http://www.johannesleonardo.com
Nexus Productions http://www.nexuslondon.com
Amber Music http://www.ambermusic.com