The ‘Nualla Puo Fermarci / Stop at Nothing’ initiative saw Nike and agency AnalagFolk seek to get more Italian women involved in and participating in sport by paring Nike athlete ambassadors with social dance influencers to create choreographed dance move challenges on TikTok.
The Challenge
The initiative was a response to a challenge to reverse the fact that ‘Italy has a specific and significant problem with its perception of sportswomen’.
It emerged after research showed that women are ‘rarely seen or celebrated’ in sport and, when they are, they are regularly ‘stereotyped’, ‘sexualised’, ‘objectified’ and even ‘vilified’.
To the extent that, even in 2019, SS Lazio fans were even handing out fliers asking female fans to stay away from their stands.
Indeed, in Milan – one of Nike’s key target cities in its global 11 city strategy – a whopping 55% of women aged between 14 and 24-years-old don’t do any sport at all.
So Nike challenged its agency to use social media o get 150,000 young Milanese women moving in a way that would solidify the sportswear giant’s status as a champion of women’s sport at every level.
The brief was to get Nike spoken about and engaged with and to create brand-led ‘real-world action’ with far-reaching effects on women participating in sport.
The team’s research also suggested that women were also ‘tired of being told to do sport by brands’, so the task was to find the right message and the right medium to connect with Gen Z in 2019. One that emerged through the audience’s lens rather than Nike’s perspective.
The Milan research asked the target audience segment what they were doing if they weren’t playing sport? And the reply was that they spent most time on social media – but not just passive scrolling.
A new social currency had developed alongside the rise of a new social platform – TikTok. Indeed, it found that thousands of young Milanese women were challenging each other to perform complex dance routines on the fast growing social platform TikTok.
The Campaign
Seeking to maximise participation and get young Milanese women into sport, Nike chose to try and replicate the fun and the engagement the audience was finding on TikTok.
In December 2018, Nike and its agency teamed up with three Milanese TikTok influencers – with a combined following of 11 million and a majority of followers aged between 16 and 20 – who were all known for posting dance challenges on the platform.
Each TikTok influencer was paired with a Nike elite athlete and the pairs worked together to co-create dance moves and routines based on each athlete’s specific sport.
Italian boxer Federica Monacelli worked with Martina Picardi, basketball Olbis Futo Andrè teamed up with Kessy and Mely and Juventus star Benedetta Glionna paired up with Virginia Montemaggi.
The three choreographed dance routines were shot on video and posted on TikTok in January 2019 and the influencers challenged their followers to video themselves mirroring the same moves.
In addition to running on their own channels, the team worked with TikTok to amplify the dance channelges on the channel’s first-ever campaign page and supported this space through in-platform ads.
Nike / Nulla Puo Fermarci (Stop At Nothing) from AnalogFolk on Vimeo.
Comment:
The initiative generated more than 100m+ views and 540k+ likes for the three challenges – with 20m+ #basketbeat views in the first 36 hours and more than 46k user-generated routines were posted in response.
In terms of media results, more than 300 articles were written about the campaign for a combined readership of more than 600 million.
The media coverage ranged from campaign athletes featuring on the cover of Corriere della Sera, to coverage in television news outlets such as Sky Sports.
The agency also reports that social media engagement across Nike platforms generated more than 150,000 conversations specifically about the campaign and its athletes.
Nike reported that NikePlus membership numbers spiked during the period of the initiative with a shrinking gender gap with Milan becoming the fastest-growing city in Nike’s EMEA region as ‘more young women see Nulla Puo Fermarci as a way into sport.
The initiative also scooped the ‘Most Innovative Use of New Social Platforms’ at The Drum Content Awards 2019.
Links:
Nike Italy
https://www.youtube.com/user/nike
https://www.instagram.com/nike/
AnalogFolk
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