Running under Nike’s ongoing ‘Never Stop Playing’ platform, the sportswear behemoth’s children subdivision rolled out a back-to-school campaign in mid-August fronted by athlete ambassador Virgil van Dijk and featuring a fulsome does of back garden family football fun.
Working with agency Soursop, production outfit Kode and Director India Rose Harris, this Nike Kids campaign transforms the ordinary and everyday into something awash with colour and filled with fun as the Liverpool FC and Dutch defender van Dijk and his kids front a series of cute videos which aim to inspire millennial parents with fun moments created from everyday family life.
The marketing burst rolled out across all Nike EMEA platforms, supported by OOH assets in most major Nike stores and films playing across Nike social media platforms and on nike.com.
The campaign, which spans a set of films and photographs, was built around the idea of ‘finding the magic in the mundane through sport’ and rejects some of the traditional back-to-school tropes (such as kids in new uniforms and shoes) in favour of celebrating the joy of late summer. It features families transforming everyday chores into playful activities and shows how normal tasks can be turned into a form of sport.
The Van Dijk family is filmed with the big centre back gardening on a Sunday and family members turning the everyday garden tasks into an epic football match.
As well as the van Dijk gardening film, additional spots include one featuring YouTube and Channel 5 TV personalities ‘The Grimwades’ turning work from home into a monumental dance battle, while the third and fourth films feature families discovered through street casting filmed turning a walk around the block into a 100m race and doing the laundry into a game of tennis doubles.
The Soursop team which worked in the campaign included ECD Ravi Amaratunga Hitchcock, CD Francesca Marchesi, Creative Will Lowe, Art Director Salvatore Gullifa, Junior Art Director Tom Sutcliffe, Account Director Roos Verheyen and Managing Director Abi Leah.
The production company was Kode with Director India Rose Harris and Producer Amalia Rosen-Rawlings, editing by TenThree, while the photographer was Lucas Garrido, with Palma Pictures handling production services and post production run by No8.
Comment
This creative, which marks the first time that Van Dijk has appeared alongside his two daughters, is slightly surreal, certainly playful and definitely full of energy.
The campaign was inspired by Nike research which found that sport could be a key factor to families having fun again after the mundanity of Covid-19 lockdowns
It also offers a fresh tactical approach to this phase of the children’s annual calendar by focusing on holding on to late summer fun rather than adding to the tidal wave of new school uniform, footwear and equipment campaigns so familiar at this time of year.
This campaign marks the third collaboration between Nike and agency Soursop following on from creating the sportswear brand’s ‘What Are You Working On’ Emma Raducanu Wimbledon campaign earlier in 2022 and a community-based campaign with Nike Berlin last year.
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