For most brands, the World Cup means one thing – the match. But football fandom doesn’t only live there. It lives in a myriad of moments before. For Snipes, a brand rooted in street culture rather than sports performance, that gap was the opportunity for its Snipes x Nike: United by Attitude campaign. So SLAPS, the independent creative studio behind campaigns for Under Armour and Rakai, gave the brand The Game Before the Game, because the most interesting moment for a brand, it says, isn’t kick-off, it’s everything that happens before. 

The campaign, that has launched across social, digital and in-store throughout Europe, promotes the new Snipes x Nike World Cup collection – three trainer styles and an apparel range – through a series of films and photography that capture the charged, intimate build-up to the tournament. The getting-ready rituals. The private spaces. The shared attitude that turns people into fans before a single ball is kicked.

The Game Before the Game is built on an underexploited truth: while the World Cup unites the world, the moments that actually connect people happen in private – in living rooms, on street corners, in the time before the world turns its eyes to the pitch. It’s a space most football-adjacent campaigns ignore entirely in favour of performance messaging and stadium spectacle.

Given significant creative freedom by Nike, SLAPS developed a campaign that weaves product and art direction together from the ground up. The Nike Air Max’s distinctive transparent light-blue outsole became a visual anchor for the entire campaign, blue runs through the shoot, the colour world, and the overall aesthetic as a deliberate creative thread rather than an afterthought.

The campaign contains three social shorts and a hero film, following a central talent figure through a series of pre-match rituals – getting his hair dyed blue by friends, customising his Nike Air Force 1s, dancing in the living room with his mum. The films are about the culture behind sport. There are no game scenes nor clips of athletic prowess.

“Football is the world’s biggest cultural moment, but most brands only show up for the match. At Snipes we’re interested in something deeper, the communities, the rituals, the attitude that people bring to the game long before kick-off. SLAPS understood that instinctively and built a campaign that feels genuinely true to who we are,” stated Lennart Walter, in-house creative director, Snipes.

“The Snipes x Nike World Cup collection is about more than footwear. It’s about how a generation expresses itself around the biggest sporting moment on the planet. Seeing that translated into a campaign with this level of cultural depth is exactly what we were hoping for,” added Niklas Nattermann, key account manager (Nike), Snipes.

“Football culture is enormous, but it’s mostly told through the same lens,” noted Sebastien Vandecasteele, founder, SLAPS. “The match, the stadium, the performance. We wanted to find where Snipes actually lives within that culture, and that’s in the build-up – the attitude people bring before any of that begins.”

“The pre-match ritual is where identity gets expressed,” added Dave Bonaparte, creative director, SLAPS. “What you wear, who you’re with, how you prepare. That’s the territory that felt true to Snipes, and true to the kid watching the World Cup from their living room, not a VIP box.”