Just Do It:
Originals
During my time as the Global Brand Communications Director ‘Brand Voice’ for Nike, I led a team charged with bringing to life the daily voice of ‘Just Do It’ across social. My time in this role happened to coincide with the 30th year anniversary of ‘Just Do It’ and Nike was just beginning a 2-year transformation of how it approached social media. I was lucky enough to be the creative lead briefed to cast and bring to life a vision to reset Nike’s voice in social.
The vision was rooted in answering one simple question. If the best social brands feel human, how can we make Nike feel human? The answer was just as simple. The human voice of Nike is the voice of the athlete. So, we called the vision “The Athlete’s Forum”. A way to spotlight the real, honest, and remarkable stories of elite and everyday athletes with the goal of creating daily inspiration from athlete-to-athlete. It became a way to humanize the heroes, and hero the humans that make Nike what it is.
In order to bring this to life, we had to stop thinking in boom-and-bust campaign cycles and start thinking about a long-term brand narrative with daily stories to bring it to life. Instead of writing posts, we wrote shows. Nike already had an incredible cast of athletes, so it was about developing formats that we could use to tell stories between the iconic TV spots that set each narrative arch in motion.
As such, I was fortunate to oversee a global creative team as well as a body of work that threaded the narrative between Crazy Dreams, Dream Crazier, and Don’t Change Your Dreams, Change The World. In all, the team created over 100 athlete films that signed off ‘Just Do It’ during my time at the helm. Below are some of my favorite stories we told.
My Crazy Dreams was the first series we launched to pilot Nike’s social reset and focused on the grit required to chase a crazy dream. The success of these stories with Nike’s audience led to the rest of the slate getting green lit and ultimately paved the way for the next era of athlete storytelling at Nike.
Birthplace of Dreams brought elite athletes back to the place it all began. It looked at crazy dreams through the lens of one athlete, one location, and one honest conversation. The success of each episode in social was amplified when broadcasters around the world asked to air these stories surrounding live sports coverage in their broadcasts. Making the jump from Nike’s IGTV to TV as earned media during the French Open, NBA Season, and Women’s World Cup.
Fight For Your Dreams was a series that focused on four incredible athletes who had to fight incredible adversity to chase their dream. In Zeina’s case the film actually helped her dream of fighting in international competitions in a Hijab a reality and changed the course of access to sport for a generation of girls to follow.
Dream Crazier was a series that explored the foils that stand in your way as an athlete and the voice inside that tells you to keep going.
Don’t Change Your Dreams, Change the World
Don’t Change Your Dreams, Change the World told the story of Nike’s partner organizations by focusing on the humans who are the real driving force for change behind the scenes.
Wall of Dreams explored the idea that if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. It set out to spotlight the ripple effect during the Women’s World Cup and explored how dreams of some can inspire the dreams of all.
To everyone that made this work happen.
Thank
you.