It just needs to touch us emotionally. Once it does, regardless of the actual technical details of a car or a web hosting service, the commercial has played its part.

2. Many people gather together yearly to watch
the Super Bowl. But many are not interested in
the actual game. They want to watch the ads.
Why? Because those ads, some of the best of
the year, offer us the chance to feel something
amazing, whether is humor or drama. For an ad
to become viral, it does not need to portray all
the details about a certain service or product.

3. It just needs to touch us emotionally. Once it
does, regardless of the actual technical
details of a car or a web hosting service, the
commercial has played its part.

4. During these Olympics, many ads have also
offered us the chance to feel something
special, from the inspiration of some of
these athletes to the humorous comparisons
between them and us, the mere mortals. In
many instances, what we feel watching
these ads sometimes surpasses the
emotions felt during the actual athlete’s
performance.

6. The same occurs when TV stations put
together the preview of a boxing match,
creating the huge expectations of a fight with
monumental music, angry comments, snippets
of past performance and highligths of the
contenders’ careers. Those previews, just like
the movie previews, carry the essence of our
emotions, bottled in small, yet powerful
quantities, like a tiny bottle of perfume contains
the pure essence of some otherworldly aroma.

7. And that is exactly what happened when I
watched the Phelps’ Under Armour
commercial. Mostly shot in the dark, the ad
emphasizes that most of the preparation, the
hard work, the sacrifice happens in the dark,
when the others are still sleep.

9. We don’t get to see those four years of prep,
pre-Olympic dark ages that lead to the light
of the cameras, the world’s attention and the
podium celebrations. That ad transports us
during a few seconds, making us feel part of
the journey, of the sacrifice, the focus on the
mere essence, forgetting about the clothes
one wears and even forgetting to shave.

10. By traveling those seconds, we also feel part
of history, of those medals obtained by the
son of Poseidon, all for team USA,
regardless of the personal struggles he
endured in between the Olympics in London
and Rio. And when the ad runs, and we feel
-even through the screen- any of those
highly human emotions, the brand, the
athlete, and even us, feel like champions.

11. The ambiance of the ad also inspire us,
because it reminds us that when we close
the door to focus on something, when we
start the day before anyone else, when we
put all our energies trying to achieve our
goals, good things can happen.

12. Swimming at 5 am, the cupping sessions,
the food we eat to fuel our bodies, and even
the times when we visualize, in our sleep,
the triumph we are pursuing, they all lead to
the pinnacle of achievement. Performance
day. The day of the final exam, the big sale
to a customer, the project that got approved
after months of prep, the presentation you
gave to a large audience…

14. All good things require the appropriate time
and effort. And since we don’t have these
wonderful cameras following us around
during those strenous hours of sacrifice, we
watch this ad and see them reflected on the
screen, allowing us to watch how, at least in
our heads, we feel once we reach a
milestone and look back at the journey.

15. And that last shivering scene, when Michael
looks into the pool, as if trying to make
sense of everything he has done, one
cannot avoid thinking that, at the end,
inevitably, those efforts will pay off.

16. Finally, the behind-the-cameras scenes allow
us to appreciate that even Phelps needs to go
through grueling practice sessions, helping us
debunk the myth that he is “just” naturally
talented. If that were the case, he would not
need to do anything in between Olympics and
just show up to get the gold medal. However,
as any high-performance individual knows,
there is always hard work and deliberate
practice behind every success story.