In mid May, ahead of June’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, Nike rolled out a new campaign aimed at inspiring women’s sport in general and generating support for the US Women’s National Team in particular.
The spot, called ‘Dream With Us’, is the latest addition to the brand’s ongoing ‘Dream Crazy/Dream Crazier’ Just Do It anniversary campaign, features young female athletes from various different sports walk out of locker rooms and stadium tunnels with focus and purpose whilst narrator Viola Davis says “The craziest dream of all is the one that starts a million more”.
The creative is fronted by a phalanx of prominent Nike women athlete ambassadors such as Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas, WNBA player Elena Delle Donne and 13-year-old professional soccer play Olivia Moultrie, as well as USWNT star Mallory Diane Pugh (an American soccer player who currently plays for the Washington Spirit of the National Women’s Soccer League).
Supported by an OOH ad strand, the spot first aired on US national television during Sunday 12 May’s NBA playoffs and debuted online across Nike’s social channels on the same day.
Comment:
Add this inspiring Nike tearjerker to the steady trickle of strong creative leveraging women’s sport in general and France 2019 in particular (and, of course, to the longest line of stand-out sportswear brand spots in the sports marketing space).
It follows on from Nike’s ‘Dream Crazy’ (see case study) launch spot last year featuring former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick who led the equality/brutality/racism kneeling protest in the NFL and the Serena Williams fronted ‘Dream Crazier’ extension (see case study) which challenges dismissive stereotypes of female athletes (see case study).
The controversy and the success surrounding this campaign has been mirrored in sport itself: for example, early in 2019 28 members of the US women’s national team sued the sport’s governing body for gender discrimination which led to an equal pay commitment part funded by USWNT sponsor LUNA.
The California-based Clif Bar & Company nutrition bar partner’s financial pledge to the US women’s team guaranteed $31,250 to each player in the 23-woman World Cup roster. A sum equal to the difference between what the US Soccer Federation pays the men’s and women’s national teams in bonus money for qualifying for the World Cup.
Links:
Nike
https://www.instagram.com/nike/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+nike
Wieden & Kennedy
https://www.wk.com/about/office/portland/
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