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GRAND AND GOLD OGILVY WINNER: SOCIAL MEDIA
ADVERTISER: Nike
AGENCY: R/GA
MOBILE MESSAGING APP: Kik
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MARKETING CHALLENGE
In Nike's twice-a-year initiative, "Gear Up," several of the brand's sports categories come together to encourage teen athletes to purchase gear to help athletes succeed in the upcoming athletic season. But in the frenetic back-to-school fall shopping period, some teen athletes end up compromising on sports gear to focus on everyday back-to-school items and clothing. How could Nike keep teen athletes focused on purchases they need in anticipation of the upcoming athletic season? The answer lay in the idea for a digital "holiday" called "Gear Up Day" aimed at teen athletes.
METHODOLOGY
Using social listening and assessing Google search trends, Nike wanted to understand how teen athletes spend their summer months: Are they training or playing in summer leagues, and are they even preparing for the season ahead? Nike also wanted to understand the conversations and communications around preseason, and from a consumer standpoint how much thought teen athletes put into their gear and products: What was essential for them to own? Did they have a dream product?
Instead, Nike learned that teen athletes focused on typical summertime themes: vacations, parties, friends, and summer jobs. But there were other clues to their mind-set: "Tryouts" was the most commonly searched sports term for teen athletes in June, peaking in July. "Hell week" peaked in August right before preseason, when teen athletes dreaded their training sessions and being sore and out of shape.
The brand still needed to identify how to motivate teen athletes to take action and prepare for the season. One-on-one interviews revealed the presence of a nemesis in the teen athlete's life. This was the key insight that would inform Gear Up Day's creative development: Every teen athlete has a rival whose presence pushes him or her to work harder and play harder—essentially the ultimate motivator.
CREATIVE EXECUTION AND RESULTS
Nike's creative team in 2015 came up with TJ, a fictitious digital persona who represented a teen athlete's biggest rival, "frenemy" or motivator. TJ is "the kid who's always a bit better than you … that irritatingly perfect persona, girl or boy, to get you riled up this summer." And so began the work on "Take on TJ". The campaign included leveraging influencers and athletes on social media to seed the TJ character through Nike-sponsored Tweets. A hero film on Nike Category Facebook and YouTube channels introduced the concept. The impact was immediate. Within 24 hours there were more than 4,000 non-paid views and 9-times greater engagement than the average Nike post as teen athletes tried to figure out who TJ was. Some even revealed their own personal TJs.
Partnering with the mobile messaging app Kik, Nike launched a live chat with TJ, breaking engagement records by 31 percent for the platform. In July, it hosted "Gear Up Day" in one of New York City's biggest shopping districts to unveil via Instagram and Twitter "TJ's not-so-humble brag," with Nike sponsoring athlete Richard Sherman manning the customer service center fielding all TJ-related calls.
"Take on TJ" generated 1.5 million visits in the first month of the campaign, making it one of the brand's most successful social campaigns. For Nike's followers, "Gear Up Day" became a digital "holiday," helping the brand reposition its back-to-school approach and creating a whole new opportunity in the marketplace.