Giannis Antetokounmpo has an incredible story. Born to Nigerian immigrants in Athens, Greece, he lived in a single room with his entire family. He started as a footballer, not even picking up his first basketball until age 11. But he immediately fell in love and dreamed of playing in the NBA. So, he fought his way through the Greek league, was drafted to the NBA, and was finally crowned Most Valuable Player in 2019.

To celebrate his rise from the bottom to the top, Nike asked us to create an outdoor campaign to run across Athens. Instead, we created just one outdoor piece...that was not in Athens.

Our target audience was 15-19 year old athletes. But we wanted to reach two main sub-groups: Greek kids who are living in Giannis’ shadow and kids around the world who look up to him as the back-to-back MVP.

Authenticity was key for reaching kids in Athens, so we brought the same hoop that was on top of Mt. Olympus back down to Earth and set it up in Giannis’ home neighborhood of Sepolia. Then, we invited local kids to experience it first hand alongside Giannis and his family.

We also needed our message to travel beyond Greece. So, we used Nike’s social channels, paid digital media, PR outlets from across Europe and the US, as well as Giannis’ own social channels to spread the word.

We wanted our campaign to feel like it was from Greece, to the world.

We kicked it off with our hoop reveal film in an effort to dominate the local and regional sports news cycle. To get that message to spread to the rest of the world we used a combination of partner channels, owned and paid social, PR, influencers, and Giannis’ personal channels.

We also wanted to make sure that the work was picked up by more vertical basketball outlets. So we tied the launch of our campaign to the launch of Giannis’ first signature shoe—giving everyone from basketball bloggers to fashion editors a reason to talk about our work.

Our campaign and activations ran during the last week of June 2019.

News about the hoop quickly spread way beyond Mt. Olympus, Athens, and even Greece.

There were over 2180 stories written about the hoop

More than 1000 social posts

And and estimated 900,000,000 impressions

And most importantly, we did something that nobody thought was possible. Perfectly illustrating to the next generation that crazy dreams are worth chasing.