A bit of blowing my own trumpet, but we (Mindshare UK) have just won an award for a Nike project: “Most Wanted”
On the 19th June 2008, at half time during the Portugal vs. Germany match in Euro 2008, Sir Alex Ferguson called out to all young footballers in the UK to “stand up and be counted”.
In 6 hours, 35,000 people attempted to fill 1,600 trial places, and Most Wanted had got underway.
We began following the action, creating fast-paced films as highlights for each trial:
To give a deeper insight into what motivates a typical young footballer, we also followed the stories of three young hopefuls in the trial system; Nia, Scott and Azeem. Here’s Scott at one of the trials, checking out the standard of the opposition…
This content was pushed out over a Bluetooth network of; 43 Powerleague 5 a side centres, Niketown London, 5 JJB Stores (the biggest ones, of course) and the Trafford Centre, and Bullring shopping centres. Why? Because the active audience we were speaking to were out and about, playing football, with their friends – and mobile was the best way to get through to them. Mobile content was no longer than 90 seconds long, the longer pieces above lived on Nikefootball.com and Youtube throughout the Summer months.
The Final 22
We needed to make a big celebration for the 22 Most Wanted players in the UK, and reward their efforts in getting to the Final weekend. We created a 1 hour show, Sir Alex’s Most Wanted, airing on Sky 1, the narrative following on from what our audience had been viewing on Mobile over the Summer. It was scheduled immediately after the Sky show Soccer AM, with exclusive PR previews and continuity references in the show (via Nike PR) to ensure our target audience stayed tuned in. This last part of the campaign really took the Most Wanted experience out to that wider, Football loving audience who want to be inspired by Nike’s communications.
Oh, we improved market share by 25% as a result.
