Title | NIKE WORLD CUP |
Brand | NIKE |
Product/Service | TBD |
Category |
E04. Real-time Response |
Entrant
|
NIKE Portland, USA
|
Idea Creation
|
AKQA London, UNITED KINGDOM
|
Media Placement
|
MINDSHARE Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
|
Credits
Alex Aidan |
AKQA |
Group Account Director |
Michael Sinnerton |
AKQA |
Senior Account Director |
Stuart Davis |
AKQA |
Community Manager |
Jonny Erazo |
AKQA |
Senior Community Manager |
Toby Burnett |
AKQA |
Creative Director |
Rob James |
AKQA |
Copywriter |
Adrian Stannard |
AKQA |
Associate Creative Director |
Barry Slater |
AKQA |
Senior Designer |
Albert Pukies |
AKQA |
Art Director |
Nicole Chen |
AKQA |
Creative |
Harjeet Mander |
Creative |
Copywriter |
Simon Spender |
AKQA |
Producer |
Jawwad Sheikh |
AKQA |
Senior Production Manager |
Andrew Dobbie |
AKQA |
Creative |
Mathieu Garnier |
AKQA |
Creative |
Joe Koprowski |
AKQA |
Creative |
Haley Ma |
AKQA |
Editor |
Background
The World Cup is the biggest stage both for athletes and brands. Just as much as it is a contest on pitch, it is a competition for the eyes of all that watch. For athletes, to reach the pinnacle of sport, you need irrational self belief. Nike’s goal was to uncover their athletes' unique stories and use them to inspire the millions following the World Cup with cogent, disruptive stories.
The content had to also drive business goals by connecting athlete inspiration to product innovation, creating a seamless journey to commerce. While capturing football audience’s attention, Nike set out to convert new members to create long term relationships. We set out to deliver value at every interaction and land Nike's distinctive POV amidst all the noise during the tournament.
Describe the strategy
Our target audience are 14-20 year olds that see football as more than a sport - it defines part of who they are. They live on mobile and are constantly seeking the "new". They move fast, consuming at the pace of the sport happening on pitch.
The strategy implemented was the culmination of a 3 year journey observing our consumer, adapting to their behaviours, their platforms and testing what resonated with them. At its core was embracing the fluidity of the game with how we programmed and planned Nike’s content. Instead of sticking to a linear narrative, we lead conversation with a distinctly Nike POV pre-game, then capitalizing on athlete/team success post match – always with a Nike owned destination in mind. Every piece of content had a complete user journey in mind – driving to either deeper story telling editorials or to relevant commerce pages.
Describe the execution
We capitalized on Nike’s exceptional group of athletes and teams by creating insightful, inspirational stories that struck audiences at just the right moment.
We leaned on our strongest assets – our athletes – for both inspiration and to fuel our reach by leveraging their massive following. Every piece of content was rooted in authentic athlete stories, telling the audience their unique perspective on belief based on intimate interviews we captured pre-tournament. We translated that belief insight into disruptive creative designed specifically for the platform our audience engages – Instagram. Ephemeral content was created for our core athletes and made at scale so it was adaptable to any on pitch performance scenario.
This gave us the flexibility to react quickly, lead the conversation, and ensure we had hyper-relevant destinations for every consumer interaction. As athletes created moments of brilliance on pitch, we captured eyes and diverted to commerce channels.
List the results
While Nike's dominance on pitch was helpful, we capitalized on every success by having bespoke and engaging stories for every moment of brilliance. Over 52 pieces of unique content were created across Instagram, Instagram Stories, IGTV, Twitter and Nike.com.
By leveraging athlete, club and media partner channels, we were able to reach far beyond Brand audience creating over 470 million views and unlocked a massive new audience - a single post by Ronaldo drove 224K traffic to nike.com with 2% converting to new members.
The stories created 3 times the engagement and 2 times the Google searches versus our competitors. The seamless journeys to nike commerce channels through swipe ups links increased football product sales 3 times versus last year.
Most importantly, the outcome for the consumer was a hyper relevant stream of authentic, insightful and inspirational stories that had a clear Nike POV.