Selling sport Ad nausea

ROBBIE HENSHAW is talented, so good he doesn’t need a cloying advertisement to tell us about it. One of the sponsors of the Ireland team has produced a three-minute video celebrating the player, and the family and place that made him.

It is supposed to be insightful and touching, and there are more promised on the subjects of Johnny Sexton and Paul O’Connell. It is the latest attempt by advertisers to blur the boundary between selling a product and telling a story.

Now it is not as cloyingly awful as the drinks company ad using the voice of Bill McLaren to hawk booze, a low point in the trend that sees advertising grow more sophisticated and the links between sportspeople and their products presented in imaginative ways.

McLaren provided the soundtrack to countless Six Nations for people far beyond Scotland, and using his voice in this way was sickeningly cynical.