Nike Challenges China’s Youth To Innovate In Experiential ‘The Trove’ Campaign

Nike leveraged it belief that China’s Gen Z has an increasing aesthetic appreciation for artistic creations as youth culture is breaking the boundaries of imagination with more creativity and so challenged agency BBH China to create a digital library of inspiration to boost imagination.

To reignite passion and reconnect with China’s youth following the pandemic and its lockdowns, Nike Global Catalyst Brand Management and Unit9 worked with agency BBH China to launch ‘The Trove’ experience: an ever-expanding archive of Nike’s most inspirational collaborations and showcases with their global catalysts.

Based around the brand’s belief that a group of cultural pioneers from the Nike family are promoting original thinking and leading youth culture and empowering creative expression and new ideas amongst the new generation.

Anchored within Nike’s digital space, Trove is a platform where all of Nike’s selected collaborations and consumer-creators will be collected, curated and interpreted for inspiration. Populated via segmented drops, each drop into The Trove features a catalyst’s design concept and their POV of the world, connecting Chinese youths with positive influences who explore positive themes like sports, sustainability, health, musi and the like.

Two drops have gone live so far across Nike China’s platforms: one a collaboration with Matthew M Williams (the new creative director of luxury fashion maison Givenchy) and GDragon (a leading figure in Asian pop culture). Each of these ‘drops’ were paired with events and were designed within the regulations, yet with unpredictable vision.

Nike Trove: The Universe (Click To View)

Nike Trove: GDragon (Click To View)

The minds are, according to the Portland based sportswear behemoth, agile and flexible and accessible online, in the NIKE LAB store in Shanghai and throughout partner stores through augmented reality. Indeed, the campaign brings each collection to life by blending AR experiences with an immersive 360 experiential video. While the online activation culminated with an exclusive offline event – with Nike’s pioneer users invited.

Created by BBH, ‘The Trove’ is an experience is tasked at help China’s youth to adapt to the new normal and adopt innovative mind-sets and to connect China’s youth with positive influences who explore positive themes like sports, sustainability, health, music, etc.

“Given the unpredictability of Covid, BBH China’s Nike “Trove” campaign is a great example of how BBH China is helping brands to launch more flexible experiences and blur the lines between the real and digital worlds,” explained BBH China Chief Creative Officer Kelly Pon. “We are grateful for the opportunity to work with Nike and their global network of Catalysts, to help Nike fans in China reconnect with the brand’s spirit. We live in times of creativity where, more than ever before, there is the need to harness the power of positivity, purpose, and technology to uplift and reconnect. And that’s what we hope to achieve with this campaign.”

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Nike first worked with GDragon back in 2019 on its ‘All For One’ campaign and then again in 2021.