The original brief from Nike was to find a way to think through how we could use technology to enhance a custom build out for a Lebron space opening up at Hollywood and Highland. This is Lebron’s first season as a Laker and this was supposed to be a regional Los Angeles experience celebrating this. Because of the demographic in that location and in Los Angeles, the idea was to target the Gen Z audience and to drive retail foot traffic. Snapchat was chosen because of this but there was a difficult technical challenge with the 4 megabyte file size limit. The experience went above and beyond our original goals and quickly found national appeal.

The creative idea was to celebrate the arrival of LeBron James’ arrival to Los Angeles in a larger than life way. We wanted a life size LeBron to not only be ever present by being showcased on a beautiful mural installation, but when activated via Snapchat code would come to life and emerge from the wall to recreate his first iconic dunk as a Los Angeles Laker. We wanted to create a unique experience that drew the user in from the beginning with a moment of hesitation that slowly transformed into an exhilarating moment as a life size LeBron emerges from the wall and dunks directly at the user, finishing with LeBron’s signature celebration.

The mandate for us was to find a way to use augmented reality to drive generation Z to physical locations. We targeted Snapchat because of the highly targeted audience of Gen Z’s that live on the platform and because the augmented reality technology is far ahead of other platforms. The thesis was that if we can get someone in store to try Nike’s, there’s still a much better chance that they convert than if we drive them to a website. AR is also uniquely able to bring a digital experience to a physical space. With Snap’s latest lens studio release, we were finally able to not just use a QR code to unlock an experience but actually have that experience sync with a mural itself. We found the most iconic Lebron dunk and the mural had him in motion towards that dunk, where the AR experience finished the dunk.

The experience was set to rollout on the Snapchat Platform via a downloadable lens. The activation could only be done by scanning the code in a physical Foot Locker location in Hollywood, CA. From conception to completion, the team had to go from ideation to designing and creating an art mural installation, to finalizing the AR buildout in only 4 weeks time. The art installation and AR had to be developed in tandem, creating challenges and constraints for the team. The AR activation was enabled by the Snapcode printed on the mural itself, and was physically installed to the wall of the store at a scale of 7.5 ft. X 9 ft. The experience took place in a constrained space within Foot Locker’s House of Hoops Hollywood with very little available room for the AR LeBron to move freely which provided another creative constraint for the team.

The lens went viral with no PR or paid exposure, partly because it was only supposed to be a regional experience at one physical location. A couple fans tweeted the experience right after it launched and it ended up finding so much organic traction that Bleacher Report posted the experience and Lebron ended up retweeting the experience. This went from a small regional experience to the most viral AR social experience ever, getting more than 2 million views in less than 48 hours just on Twitter. On Snap, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social platforms there were millions of more views. This was a game changer for bringing AR to the masses and went above and beyond Nike, Snap, and our expectations for the experience.