AKQA London

ABOUT

BRIEF

The World Cup is the biggest stage both for athletes and brands. The intensity in competition on the pitch is mirrored off it in the battle for eyeballs.

Nike’s goal was to use their athletes' unique and irrational stories of self-belief to inspire the millions following the World Cup with cogent, disruptive stories.

The content had to drive business goals, connecting athlete inspiration to product innovation, creating a seamless journey to commerce.

STRATEGY

14-20 year olds see football as more than a sport - it defines part of who they are. They live on mobile, constantly seek the "new", move and consume fast.

At its core, the content strategy implemented, embraced the fluidity of the game in how it was programmed and planned. Instead of sticking to a linear campaign narrative and timing structure, we lead conversation with a distinctly Nike POV pre-game, then capitalizing on athlete/team success post-match – always with a Nike owned commerce destination in mind.

EXECUTION

We used Nike’s exceptional roster of athletes and teams – and their huge followings - to create insightful, inspirational stories that struck audiences at the right moments.

Every piece of content was rooted in authentic athlete insight, offering unique perspectives on self-belief, captured in imaginative, engaging and original creative that disrupted the platform our audience engages – Instagram.

Content for our core athletes was adaptable to any of the possible on pitch performance scenarios. This gave us the flexibility to react quickly, lead the conversation, and ensure we had hyper-relevant destinations for every consumer interaction.

RESULTS

Nike athletes and teams dominated on pitch, allowing us to capitalize with over 52 pieces of unique content for Instagram, Instagram Stories, IGTV, Twitter and Nike's commerce site.

We were able to reach far beyond Brand audience using athlete and federation channels to clock over 470 million views and unlock a massive new audience.

The stories created 3 times the engagement and 2 times the Google searches versus our competitors – and 3 times sales versus last year.

MADEIT CREDITS

  • Nike FootballClient