Barclays Premier League

Interestingly, the only contribution of the Barclays Corporation, which may be a bank or a British liquor maker, seems to be this picture of a lion saying, "Your ball, is it? OK, come and get it. Bitch."

Barclays Premier League is a joint advertising campaign that allows a large number of multi-national corporations to maximize their consumer exposure both within its base in the United Kingdom as well as to non-American consumers abroad.

The campaign consists of large-scale advertisement spectacles in which human billboards, as it were, run fitfully around a field, appropriately called a "pitch", as that is exactly what the billboards are doing to viewers of the spectacle for their respective corporations' products and services, chasing a middle-sized round ball into gigantic nets, using only their feet.

The concept is based on the notion that the eyes of the tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of attendees to the spectacles, as well as those of the millions of viewers of them on the "telly", will be following the billboards around the pitch, thereby absorbing the advertisements that they contain, for the "full 90" minutes of the show. The spectacles have all the look and feel of a sporting competition, somewhat similar to the National Football League in the United States, but the lack of uniforms uncluttered by company logos betrays the reality of the purpose for the events.

Premier League Squads

I mean... look at that net. It's gigantic. I'm just saying. Why is it so god damn hard? Nil-nil? Really?

There are many different corporations involved in the campaign. To maximize the United Kingdom's consumer demographic, the squads of human billboards are spread out across the geography of England's green and pleasant land. Each of these strategically located squads promote several of the campaign's participating corporations, with one corporation's logo taking the top billing on the individual advertisements' uniform kit.

Emirates Airlines

Among the ad campaign's most visible participants is Emirates Airlines, an airline company based in the United Arab Emirates. The human billboards sporting the company's logo are among the nation's favorite, though they are often accused of a lack of aggression, simply walking the ball into the attacking zone, where the attendees at their shows prefer them to be, as it seems to be an easier task to then move the ball into the gigantic net from there. This event - the ball finding its way into the net - causes the attendees to shout with glee and is celebrated with cannon fire.

AON

AON has by far outperformed all of the other corporations in the campaign in recent years, with its human billboards and their greater skill and ability to work together to make the ball go into the gigantic net being popular throughout the world, with the notable exception of the United States, where no one even knows what AON does, where it is from, or even what its products or services entail.

Samsung

Samsung's Premier League billboard

Also quite popular is Samsung, an electronics company based in South Korea. Samsung's billboards have always been something of a second fiddle to those of the AON corporation, although recently they have been seen making their way through to the top of wider All-European advertising campaigns. Attendees to the Samsung spectacles are somehow still able to say their billboards are better than those of AON, and always with a straight face, despite the history.

Etihad Airways

A newcomer to the top of the Barclays Premier League advertising game, Etihad Airways billboards were recently finally able to overtake those of AON and make the ball go into the gigantic net one or two more times than them. Etihad Airways also feels more familiar to Americans than AON, but only because the word "Airways" is in the name so it's more obvious what kind of company they are, and the "Etihad" part sounds Arabic enough for Americans to have an idea where the corporation may be headquartered.

Relegation and promotion

There are a number of less noteworthy corporations involved, such as 188BET. Several of these are ousted from the campaign every other year via a process that the campaign calls "relegation". These corporations are then replaced by other "promoted" corporations, who will themselves inevitably be relegated out the following year. This process has never really been adequately explained, though the inevitablity of the same six corporations alternating between promotion and relegation every year that renders the process unremarkable was most likely not intended by the campaign organizers.

Effectiveness

Americans don't know much about this advertising campaign outside of some unknown level of participation by the owners of the New England Patriots NFL team, so, since only American consumers' money has any global meaning, it is unlikely that the massive amount of dollars spent by these companies are actually amounting to much at all. It may be that the act of pushing a ball around a pitch until it happens to fall into a gigantic net has some significance to the global viewing community, and therefore the spectacles themselves have some relevance. From the only side of the Atlantic Ocean that matters, however, this appears to be a bit of a stretch. The purpose for all of it remains an unsolved mystery.