NULLA PUO FERMARCI (STOP AT NOTHING)

Short List
TitleNULLA PUO FERMARCI (STOP AT NOTHING)
BrandNIKE
Product/ServiceNIKE
Category E06. Co-Creation & User Generated Content
Entrant ANALOGFOLK London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation ANALOGFOLK London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement MINDSHARE Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Production CANADA London, UNITED KINGDOM
Additional Company TIKTOK Los Angeles, USA
Additional Company 2 WIEDEN+KENNEDY London, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Simon Richings AnalogFolk Executive Creative Director
Seth Jones AnalogFolk Creative Director
Gracie Hawes AnalogFolk Creative
Jacqueline Hedge AnalogFolk Creative
Thomas Scovell AnalogFolk Executive Strategy Director
Nick McWilliams AnalogFolk Strategist
Rob O'Shea AnalogFolk Client Partner
Rosie Gee-Summons AnalogFolk Project Manager
Natalie Dobbin AnalogFolk Associate Project Manager
Femke Huurdeman CANADA London Film Director
Davey Ahern CANADA London Producer

Background

In Milan, one of Nike’s 12 key global cities, 55% of women between 14 and 24 don’t participate in sport. The lack of engagement with women and sport is embedded in the Italian culture – Italy has a specific and significant problem with the perception of sportswomen. They’re rarely seen or celebrated, and when they are, they’re stereotyped, sexualised and objectified. Nike challenged us to get 150,000 Milanese young women moving. We were asked to use social – and to leverage Nike’s own access to the best female athletes in Italian sport. Nike wanted a hugely engaging campaign that would quickly trigger participation, real-world action and change – and cement the brand’s status as the champion of women in sport at every level.

Describe the strategy

As our research suggested, women were tired of being told to do sport by brands, so what was the right message for 2019? And how could we connect with the Gen Z audience, when many brands were failing? In Milan, we asked our audience an important question – if they weren’t playing sport, what were they doing? The stats told us they spent most time on social media, but this wasn’t just passive scrolling. A new social currency had developed alongside the rise of a new social platform - TikTok. Thousands of young women were challenging one another to perform intricate dance routines. We realised we'd been looking at sport through Nike’s lens, not what it meant to our audience. To drive participation and get young Milanese women applying their abilities to "sport" as we saw it, Nike needed to replicate the connection and fun they were finding in TikTok.

Describe the execution

In December, we identified three Milan-based TikTok influencers with a combined following of 11 million. The followers were all aged between 16 and 20, and known for posting the kind of dance challenges our audience loves. We paired each ‘Muser’ with a Nike elite athlete and watched the fireworks happen. In January, they worked together to co-create a dance based on each of their sports, choreographing routines that the influencers performed on their TikTok accounts, challenging their followers to do the same. We worked with TikTok to ensure that as well as being posted out to our influencers’ followers, all three challenges were hosted on TikTok’s first-ever campaign page and supported with in-platform ads, giving us the biggest

List the results

We earned 100m+ views and 540k+ likes for the three challenges, with 20m+ #basketbeat views in just 36 hours. More than 46k user-generated routines were posted in response. Over 300 articles have been written about our campaign, for a readership of more than 600 million. That includes our athletes appearing on the cover of Corriere della Sera, one of the most conservative papers in Milan. Sky Sports – alongside numerous other news outlets – has aired features on our campaign. And we started 150k+ specific conversations around our campaign and our athletes. We drove engagement on our owned channels too – with NikePlus membership numbers growing and a quickly shrinking gender gap. Milan has become the fastest-growing city in Nike’s EMEA region, as more young women see it as a way into sport.