In China, greatness is reserved only for the chosen few who bring honor and pride to the nation. The 2012 Olympics was an opportunity for Nike to redefine greatness, to honor the pursuit of greatness, and in the process inspire kids to strive for their own personal best. We assembled a social media command centre to launch a 17 day counterstrike campaign, to affirm the greatness of China’s Olympic athletes. It became a cultural movement, helping shift a 5000 year old perception of greatness, while inspiring kids to go find their own.

To truly redefine greatness, we had to go deeper than where our audience was watching the games. We had to be where 700 million people were talking about it – The Chinese Social Media Networks. We sparked it all off on our Nike sports communities then amplified the conversation supported by athletes and influencers across Weibo and QQ.

We set up a social media command center and staffed it with creatives, strategists and community managers. We wired-up with live feeds of the games and our communities, tooled-up with custom programs to run the whole thing. We operated around the clock, monitoring the buzz to react in real time to the games.

While the Chinese state media focused only on gold, Nike celebrated the winners, the silvers, bronzes and even the athletes who came in 6th. Over 17 days of the games, we delivered 49 counter-strikes, helping redefine greatness with every message.

A few thousand retweets quickly climbed to tens of thousands, and culminated in Nike dominating conversation at a crucial moment– when Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang fell during the 110-meter hurdles. That post jumped to over 125,000 retweets becoming the number one topic on Chinese social media. Nike’s point of view on Greatness became a cultural phenomenon across China. The news talked about it. Sports commentators quoted it. Nike earned over 168million impressions on social media. While numbers are nice, the real success of the campaign was challenging a myth of greatness, and helping Chinese kids see it’s within their reach.