NIKE: Be the Proof
Client: NIKE
2019
🎯 Challenge
In 2019, China was hosting the FIBA World Cup, basketball’s premier international competition. In the post-Yao Ming era, at a time when confidence in the Chinese national team was muted, we had to fire up the country’s basketball players again.
💡 Insight
When we spoke about basketball to young players of the game, one clear tension came through: they didn’t believe that China could be great. Not only that, but that they gave us a laundry list of reasons why China could never be great: national diet, academic overload, training practices, and the sports system. These excuses were getting in the way of potential greatness and dampening their love of the game.
🚀 Solution
Inspire kids who think China will never be great at basketball to become the proof that it can.
The Work
When the FIBA World Cup came to town, we launched a campaign called ‘Be the Proof’. The campaign kicked off with three vignettes that directly tackled the excuses the country had been using to deny China’s basketball potential.
Then we launched an anthem film that spoke directly to the young generation of basketball players, asking them to become the proof, instead of waiting for it.
Finally, we launched out-of-home visuals that used stars of China’s national team such as Guo Ailun and Yi Jianlian to reinforce our Be the Proof call to action.
