Nike’s Not-So-Secret World Cup Ads Go Viral Before They Launch

The World Cup starts next month. So where’s the blitz of Nike (NKE) ads that always accompanies the globe’s biggest sporting event?

Funny you should ask. Nike will formally start pushing out its new ads tomorrow on TV, Facebook and Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. But the marketer gave the campaign a small push early this week, which is all it took. People are lapping this stuff up.

This three-minute spot, for instance, is on an “unlisted” YouTube page, which means it’s theoretically “private”–it won’t show up in YouTube search results or its homepage, and you can only get to it via a link (I got there via AdWeek’s Brian Morrissey). But it has already racked up some 400,000 views. That number will start getting really, really big tomorrow.