On Friday morning the Chiefs players took to a different kind of field as the entire Amakhosi first team were called up by the club's technical sponsors Nike to shoot a new advertisement which will appear in various print media over the next couple of months.

The campaign which will run in South Africa, will be very similar to the one carried out by Nike with some of the other football properties that the US-based company sponsors, such as current English Premier League champions Manchester United as well as FC Barcelona of Spain’s La Liga as well as a host of other individual footballers that they endorse.

On the board

In the next couple of weeks, The Amakhosi will be invading a lot of media space and will have their faces splashed across billboards as well as other print media, as Anwar Jappie sports marketing manager for Nike South Africa explains" using the Amakhosi in this new advertising campaign is in keeping with Nike’s global football advertising strategy. Jappie says “from a performance and team apparel point of view, Kaizer Chiefs forms an important part of our marketing strategy, as they are our number one football property in South Africa. Whenever we need to get our new football products out we do it using Chiefs, this most recent advertising campaign using the entire team reinforces just how powerful a commodity Chiefs can be in getting our message across”.

That look

Kaizer Motaung Junior who was recently named as fashion magazine GQ’s best dressed man in South Africa, got the thumbs up from well-known stylist Nicci Braude who was working on set at the Northern Johannesburg studios where the Nike commercial was being shot. Braude said of the Chiefs striker “I think Kaizer Junior has very well defined features which makes him stand out from the rest of the guys, his looks are very natural and he has those model looks so to speak”.

Braude was equally complimentary of Chiefs captain Cyril Nzama and said of him, “Cyril is very bold and he has that kind of David Beckham appeal which makes it so easy for him to be photographed over all I enjoyed working with Chiefs they were very co-operative and professional”.

First time

While a number of the Chiefs players had been through a photo shoot of this nature and length previously, it was the first time that some of the younger players in the Chiefs team, were literally under the spotlight.

Newly promoted Chiefs development player Bamose Gololo was one of those who had not been in an advertising shoot before and said, “I felt like a rock star with all those lights on me and there were people doing the make up, also there was someone pulling up my socks and another person making my shorts straight it was long but fun. After this I really have respect for models who go through hours day after day in the studio it is not easy work”.