Early May saw Nike launch an inventive, first-person basketball adventure, called ‘The Road to HBL’, that aims to give fans a unique, immersive glimpse into what it is like to compete in the Nike China high-school basketball league.
The campaign is one strand of a multi-phased promotional programme for Nike’s High School Basketball League (Nike HBL)’s Greater China invitational finals.
This Nike China initiative, which was developed in harness with agency R/GA Shanghai (and production company Final Frontier, plus animation studio Le Cube), aims to inspire young basketball fans to play the best hoops of their lives through their very own customised Nike HBL journey.
Fans/players not only get a first-hand taste of the tough, rigorous training regime, but also experience team bonding, game pep talks and some of the match day excitement all from the perspective of a young player.
The result is a personalised basketball diary and shareable team poster.
The initiative includes 39 scenes and 210 seconds of footage and the campaign was developed in only six weeks before it was delivered across a range of platforms including Tmall, Taobao, Weibo and WeChat browsers both on iOS and Android.
Nike’s China basketball team and R/GA Shanghai both worked closely with real HBL players, coaches and fans from across China – including people in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan – to understand and identify the key shared experiences.
The R/GA team then handed the renderings of pivotal moments, team dynamics, key phrases and game technique were crafted in collaboration to
“Nike China’s ambition is grow and elevate the presence of the platform. Not every high school kid out there know what it’s like to be in a competition of this level, the need is to create an experience to put kids out there in the shoes of HBL players so they will be inspired to be one,” explains R/GA executive creative director Terence Leong.
“We interviewed over 100 high school players to find the most common, relatable moments in the sport. How did they get into the team? What were their coaches like? What are the team dynamics? What was their first training session like? How did seniors treat them? Were their coaches tough? What were the locker room pranks? What intimidated them the most? All of this was incorporated into the final experience to make it authentic,” adds Leong.
Comment:
Along with the Shanghai Marathon, HBL is one of Nike biggest partnership investments in China and it is still a fairly new project.
This initiative, which blends a black and white cool in an animated universe with a fairly functional mindset, looks sure to boost awareness, interest and participation
This kind of immersive, animated engagement approach is proving popular for sports brands in China: another similar recent example came from Manchester United in the form of ‘Wake Up The Red Devil’ (see case study).
Links:
Nike China
https://www.nike.com/cn/zh_cn/
https://www.facebook.com/nike/
https://www.youtube.com/user/nike
https://www.instagram.com/nike/
R/GA Shanghai
https://www.rga.com/offices/shanghai
