Nike Most Wanted

Overview

Brief

In 2008, none of the home nations qualified in the UEFA European Football Championship. Nike used this as an opportunity to promote football skills and training and the need to improve our game to deliver UK footballing excellence. Nike Most Wanted was a 3-month series of training academies held at venues around the UK. Young participants could ‘graduate’ from these and the very best were chosen to play in front of Sir Alex Ferguson and the England selectors.

Que Pasa worked with Nike’s media agency, Mindshare. We were briefed to develop a mobile content proposition that would engage aspiring young players and Most Wanted participants in order to create engagement around Nike’s association with – and support of – football in the UK.

Our approach

Que Pasa created a mobile destination accessed via banner inventory in the sports channels of mobile operator portals, and through Bluetooth pushes at Power League venues nationwide.

What we did

Technology

Que Pasa ingested weekly video content (training highlights and individual participants’ video diaries) and encoded and published these to our Most Wanted site, which was built and hosted in our Mobrool platform. The site also featured a video welcome from Sir Alex Ferguson and training clips from Wayne Rooney, Joe Cole and William Gallas. We incorporated social tools (a personalised viral pass-on mechanism) and data capture so that users could register to be alerted whenever new content was uploaded.

Creative

We originated all mobile design and branding, creating page templates for the mobile site and animated banners for advertising placement. The site can still be viewed on a mobile browser at http://nikemostwanted.mobi

Gallery: click to see full size images

The results

Response

Mobile content attracted 240,000 Bluetooth downloads, 20% above target, and the site achieved 16,000 unique users. Across web and mobile, Most Wanted was watched by 193,000 16-34 year old men, making it Nike’s most successful ad-funded programming to date.

Best bits

Following the highs and lows of some of the participants – like Pop Idol with (foot)balls!

Feedback

An NMA judge (see below) commented that ‘this is yet another example of why Nike is ahead of its competitors’ and commended it for ‘putting proper budgets behind campaigns that deliver excellent return on investment.’

Awards

Nike Most Wanted received a New Media Age Effectiveness Award at the 2009 ceremony.

Outcome

Que Pasa continues to work with Mindshare and ran a further campaign for Nike 5 a Side in 2009.

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