Helping Nike win the NBA All-Star Weekend brand shootout

In China, The NBA All-Star Weekend (ASW) is an important time for brands to be noticed. For Nike, it's vital to be among the most talked about brands during this live event. The brand created a special line of Jordans and wanted to use the weekend as an opportunity to innovate on the viewership experience.

The challenge for Nike was to cater to digitally distracted audience looking for more ways to interact during live game moments. They aren’t just watching the game passively; they are also talking about the games in real-time on social, checking the latest player statistics, and—more importantly—they are searching for the latest products worn by their favorite athletes.

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When a game is live, this audience flips across screens and platforms to maximise their viewership experience. To keep these digitally engaged ballers, aged 16 to 29, hooked on Nike's owned e-ecommerce channels, the brand integrated all digital behaviours into one viewership experience. Mindshare brought together all the elements of the audience's viewership experience in one place: Nike’s Jordan WeChat Mini program.

This allowed Nike to flip the way it engaged with consumers. By putting their digital desires first, Nike didn’t need to rely on paid media to push product and disrupt the viewership experience, instead, Nike became the ‘total experience’ that its audience wanted.

Nike amplified a call-to-action on Tencent Sports and social channels, leveraged its social channels to engage members, and through WeChat’s new ‘@’ function, enabled users to organically bring their friends in to the live game chat rooms. Within Nike’s Mini Program (MP) could users watch the live stream, while simultaneously chatting with friends in real-time chat rooms. Users had access to limited edition content and products too in a consumer journey, extending from entertainment to purchase.

Nike changed the game on how it engages basketball fans using mobile during its must-win live game moments. By flipping the script on ‘advertising’ and becoming the experience fans wanted most, consumers raced to Nike’s owned mobile channel on WeChat en-masse.

While the Nike’s ASW experience was live, Jordan brand created a sharp increase in the traffic to the Nike MP, leading to a triple-digit increase in revenue during the campaign period. Nike’s activation with Jordan during ASW also contributed to a sharp spike in membership during the campaign period. 

"A clever and well thought out holistic campaign in maximizing the All-Star Weekend hype to the benefit of Nike," a member of the DMA jury commented. "It pulled together all to one platform: the basketball fans and the Nike users, and with live games and other unique contents, the campaign had encouraged viewers and fans to interact among each other as well as with Nike, creating a close and engaging and owned community. This is also a perfect example on how to create the right occasion to encourage impulse purchases."

This campaign won gold in both the Mobile and the Consumer Products (Others Including Durable Goods) categories at the Digital Media Awards.