Nike Japan continues to challenge sporting stereotypes through local market work within the brand’s global ‘Play New’ brand platform and the latest iteration, called ‘New Girl’, is a frenetic take on the various life projections from the moment parents learn their unborn child is a girl.
The message is that society needs to break the tradition that imagination and intention so often seals the fate of people before they are even born and that this needs to change – now.
Created by Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo, ‘New Girl’ is an epic, constantly switching imagined story from womb to maturity. It opens with parents having an ultrasound. “You’re going to have a girl!” says the female doctor (which in itself is a message in Japan which has the fewest female doctors among all OECD countries at just 21%) which fires the parents’ imaginations and worries about what her future might be like. The pace is frenetic throughout and the tone changes halfway through when the shouts “That’s enough! Girls can do anything!” and the focuses switches to vignettes of girls and women breaking glass ceilings in sport and business and ends with the line: “And you, what do you want to do?”
The includes shots of and references to Japanese tennis super star Naomi Osaka, footballer Ami Otaki, high school sumo wrestler Rizumu Kasai, wrestler Miyu Nakamura, figure skater Marin Honda and gender discrimination activist Momoko Nojo.
Launched on 28 May, the 120-second spot was deployed across all Nike Japan’s digital and social platforms.
Comment:
This spot is so energetic, fast, frenetic and busy that its pace reflects the urgent drive for change.
The spot is certainly generating plenty of engagement and has notched up 11,413,677 views on Nike Japan’s YouTube channel alone in the first week since it was posted.
The interest is perhaps unsurprising considering the lack of gender equality in Japan a country currently ranked 123 out of 151 on the gender equality index.
According to a 2021 World Economic Forum report, the average Japanese woman’s income was 44% lower than the average man’s. And this inequality unsurprisingly affects female athletes who have largely still been unable to break into popular, traditionally ‘male’ branded sports like sumo and baseball.
The sportswear behemoth’s global ‘Play New’ platform sets out to challenge sporting stereotypes through the lens of non-traditional sports, challenging the idea of win-at-all-costs, ending toxic masculinity and gender equality in sport (and life).
The ‘Play New’ brand platform launched globally at the start of May with a multi-market core campaign supported by local country initiatives like ‘A New Day’ in Korea and a football-themed, anti-masculine toxicity spot in the UK fronted by Marcus Rashford.
This campaign follows on from Nike’s W+K London-made ‘The Toughest London’ depicting pregnancy and motherhood as the ultimate athletic exertion.
Nike does seem to be changing its policy and attitude as a company following criticism around its own gender equality policies highlighted by its approach to former athlete endorser Allyson Felix.
Olympic star Felix left the brand after it offered a 70% reduced contract following the (medically difficult) birth of her first child. Felix left to join Gap-owned Athleta brand and recently appeared in a mother-and daughter led campaign for Pantene called ‘What’s Your Legacy?’
Since then, Nike announced a new maternity policy for sponsored athletes, guaranteeing pay and bonuses for 18 months around pregnancy.
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