AT&T Commercial Features Well-Known Sneaker Shops

AT&T Kicks Commercial

A rough looking dub of an AT&T commercial is released in what appears to be an example of casual viral seeding.  In any case, the sets are said to be based on various famous sneaker shops whose names are visible in the commercial so I'm assuming they have made some kind of actual agreement rather than just sneakily biting the sneaker shop style.

Here's the description from the YouTube post:
AT&T's new commercial (created by Sanders\Wingo and directed by Chris Robinson) brings sneaker culture to the forefront. Sets were created to mimic actual stores like: ALife, Undefeated, Solebox, and Motive807. Check it out.

Via Miraflor.

Update:
Considering what it might mean to have these sneaker shops in a tv commercial caused me to leave out the fact that I basically think it's a pretty darn good commercial.  It flows well and, instead of the usual using technology takes me to a nutty fantasy world routine, the commercial actually does communicate a sense of the fact that networked communications have changed how we're connected to the world.

And it's done by simply playing off the shared experience of shopping online, the inevitable move to shopping via cellphone as the mobile web kicks into gear and an actor passing through a series of sets that register "cool" at every turn.

I say simply but that's not to imply that it's easy to do.

I know some people will roll their eyes at this commercial, or whatever they do at such moments, but I give it a thumbs up.  It's also a reminder that the biggest sneaker freak watchers are in marketing and that sneaker freaks are practically worshipped by the marketing industry.

I would almost be willing to bet actual money that when marketers sit around discussing the summary they read of The Tipping Point that they keep coming back to sneaker freaks as a magical key of some sort.  Once identified, such fetish items can then be used in turn to unlock the pockets of said marketers and the institutions they represent.  And you can take that to the bank.