Retro Cool + Modern Hip = Nike

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Client: Nike
Creative Agency: AKQA and R/GA

The Nike Basketball campaign was created by AKQA in Q1 of 2006. AKQA was tasked with defining and generating awareness for Nike's three central basketball product ranges: “Force”, “Flight” and “Uptempo.” The campaign needed to make the product silo performance benefits understandable to Asian ballers as well as affirm Nike's basketball heritage. The central digital experience brings the three styles of play to life through the use of dynamic metaphors that communicate the attributes and attitudes of these three styles of play. The site experience combined interactive movies and animated 3D product features with a retrospective of Nike's historic kicks. Users were also able to download IM icons, blog avatars and exclusive desktop wallpapers.

Additionally, AKQA worked with sound designer Richard Devine and New York-based Tronic Studio to develop three, 15 second TV spots based on metaphorical product movies featured on the site. These were aired on TV in Asia and were featured at point of sale.

The final phase of the campaign, which launches in the coming months, is an interactive card collecting game. "Rule the Court" gives ballers the chance to collect over 30 exclusive Nike player cards by playing against the Nike "Hoopsbot Super Computer."
-- Charlie Taylor, director of production, AKQA

Creative Showcase is meant to be a teaching tool and an inspiration for our readers. We comment only on creative that we really love. Our panelists discuss what makes it great, but if they feel there were missed opportunities that would have made it better, we invite them to mention those. And finally, we seek out a wide range of opinions that reflect the marketplace for the panel, in order to provide constructive, useable feedback for agencies, clients and others involved in these creative pieces.

Nike’s web properties, basketball in particular, are always so depressingly fantastic. The work Nike gets out of its interactive shops is consistently both groundbreaking and ideal. Their sites are stunning, they are deep and rich and each always seems to employ some bit of Flash navigation that other designers try to emulate for the next three years. Sole System, the visual Nike basketball shoe family tree, is a fine example (linked to from this site).

As expected, AKQA’s nikebasketball.com.sg was flawless. AKQA does great work and this site was pixel perfect (some video compression issues aside). Lush sound design is integrated throughout the site in complete harmony with the visual design, never feeling gratuitous. The content is beautiful and deep, offering lots to explore, from the three video spots, to the timeline vignettes and the 3D product information screens. The bottom nav is slick, impeccably executed but a little predictable in its interactivity. If the site has one shortcoming I would say that it is all just a little too predictable. It is gorgeous and flawless to be sure, but I didn’t find any of it to be groundbreaking. The site is great and for any other client this would have been an absolute home run, but for Nike it is par for course.
-- Patrick Barrett, gamut industries

What's a brand to do when product lines (Force, Flight, etc.) within a product line (basketball shoes) within a product line (shoes) seem to have proliferated to monumental size? Well, Nike chose to have a monumental site built to give today's consumers a lesson in -- and a place to worship -- their basketball shoes.
 
Complete with slick images, animated transitions, a Flash-based product lineage feature and, oh yeah, 360-degree interactions to demonstrate shoe features, this site inspires, waxes nostalgic, and sells consumers on the finer points of the product.
 
For an old geezer like me, who hasn't worn a pair of basketball shoes since the 80s, I was captivated by the product lineage features. And all the shoes were there: the first basketball shoes I remember buying, that pair of shoes I wore when I was cut from the team and that one pair that my brother got, but I always wanted.  
 
Flashiness and stickiness aside, one area for improvement would be load time. It took a while for all the different features to load, including the transitions, so navigation was choppy.
-- Mario Sgambelluri, managing editor, iMedia Communications