Nike: Inspiring the Athlete Within Every Woman

 
Campaign Summary

To connect with young women in India, Nike created "Da Da Ding," a powerful song and music video featuring a squad of everyday female athletes. This resulted in more downloads of the Nike+ app, as well as new runners joining the Nike Run Club in Mumbai and Nike training sessions.

Strategy

Objective and Context:

Nike’s mission was to get India’s 400 million teens and young adults to play more sports.

Target Audience:

The target audience was India’s youth, specifically young women who face more barriers to playing sports than men. As Mumbai and the top cities contribute the majority of business to Nike, all efforts were focused there.

Creative Strategy:

Today’s youth lives on a smartphone, with little differentiation in time spent between screen and the real world. Nike knew it had to lead with mobile. However, to trigger a new line of thought and change the context for sports among women, this just couldn’t be another campaign. Nike needed to understand what would differentiate it from its competitors. The answer was Bollywood. Apart from being the most-followed genre of content for women, today’s actresses in India are rewriting the rules. Their struggles and achievements have made them true role models.

Execution

Overall Campaign Execution:

Nike created “Da Da Ding,” a powerful song and music video by rapper Gizzle and producer Gener8ion featuring a squad of everyday female athletes. “Da Da Ding” audio debuted on Mumbai’s top radio station, Radio One. In addition to the song, top Radio One DJ Erica took on an eight-week Nike challenge to inspire youth with her weekly achievements on-air. Simultaneously, the track was made discoverable on top music apps.

The International Indian Film Academy Awards, Bollywood’s equivalent of the Oscars, launched the “Da Da Ding” video. Leading actress Deepika Padukone, who comes from a family of acclaimed athletes, is featured in the video and gave a heartfelt speech at the awards on how sports had personally shaped her life before playing the video in entirety.

“Da Da Ding” was promoted along with top Bollywood YouTube videos to help drive organic views due to the track’s growing popularity. On mobile, Nike monitored social conversations mentioning “Da Da Ding” with an opportunity re-target those users with Nike+ app communication to start their own fitness journey.

Mobile Execution:

When “Da Da Ding” was first released as an audio track, Nike created music playlists on top streaming apps to get India’s youth from tapping their feet to taking their first run. With the track getting airplay on radio and later on TV, Nike made the track discoverable on Shazam and built a custom experience within the app to allow users to learn more about the everyday athletes featured in the video, buy their gear, and sign up for Nike Running and Training sessions held in Mumbai.

As searches for Nike’s squad of female athletes grew, Nike collaborated with top women’s lifestyle brands to create stories around each of them.

Results (including context, evaluation, and market impact)

According to the annual brand track study, Nike was favorably placed as the No. 1 sportswear brand for youth, a spot that was previously occupied by PUMA.

Thanks to “Da Da Ding,” active users on Nike+ Apps totaled 118,000 from May to August. In that same period, more than 1,300 new runners joined the Nike Run Club in Mumbai and another 250 joined the Nike Training sessions.

“Da Da Ding” was streamed two million times online, helping it reach No. one on iTunes India and Shazam’s India Chart. More than 50 user-generated videos about “Da Da Ding” were tracked on Facebook and YouTube. Against seven planned articles, a further 250 articles from leading online publications covered “Da Da Ding.” Even Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, reposted the video on her own Facebook page with a shout-out to the everyday women athletes featured.


Categories: Cross-Media | Industries: Apparel, Footwear | Objectives: Cross-Media | Awards: Gold Winner