Ronaldo stars in new Pirelli Campaign

The 1998-1999 world advertising campaign featured international
soccer star Ronaldo. The ad was presented at an exclusive world
preview in Milan, attended by Ronaldo himself, by the Chairman and
CEO of Pirelli Group, Marco Tronchetti Provera, and by Massimo
Moratti, Chairman of Inter Football Club, Ronaldo’s current Italian
team. Pirelli’s campaign featured Ronaldo in a stunning photograph
in the wake of the other famous Pirelli print ad of 1994, which
portrayed Carl Lewis wearing high stiletto red shoes. This year, it
was the 1997 World Footballer of the Year, towering against a
beautiful panorama of Rio de Janeiro, dressed in its famous black
and blue n. 10 shirt, with open arms, in his typical attitude after
he scores a goal. In the highly spectacular picture, Ronaldo
embodies a strong sense of power and dominion provided by his ”
miraculous” feet, transformed, on this occasion, in Pirelli tyres;
under his uplifted foot is the rubber treadpattern of Pirelli’s
latest tyre, the P3000 Energy, launched in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The
Pirelli’s latest ” large volume” tyre with an advanced
technological content, P3000 Energy marries for the first time high
performance with the advantages of a ” green” tyre with low rolling
resistance and fuel consumption, in a product available to
everybody. The headline, ” Power Is Nothing Without Control” , is
the claim which emphasizes Pirelli tyres’ unique capacity to match
performance and safety, which has labelled all its latest
campaigns.

The amazing picture of Ronaldo has been taken by Ken Griffiths, the
top British photographer famous for its splendid features of exotic
countries, and award winning advertising shots on location. The
campaign was created, as all Pirelli’s recent ones, by Young &
Rubicam international agency.