Kids in London are faced with impossibly high pressures and expectations from everywhere to succeed - to be seen as popular, stylish, “cool” (whatever that is). At a time when many brands were feeding into their insecurities - promoting style, swag and big celebrities as a way to achieve - Nike wanted to lift them up. It was a harder challenge, but a more rewarding one - to inspire the inner athlete within every youth through the entertaining, empowering, confidence-building ability of sport.

Instead of doing a big any-market campaign, focusing on star international athletes, we flipped the traditional sports ad model and made London kids the heroes. And in turn, our grand ambition turned from making elite athletes look like Gods, to making everyday London kids feel untouchable.

We went deep into London to understand what it’s really like to be an athlete in this city. We found some incredible kids who don’t boast about how good they have it, they boast about how hard they have it, because that’s what makes them tougher. From the bad weather, to controlling parents, to a sexist society, every kid in London has struggles. But rather than complaining about them, young Londoners use their hardships as fuel.

An epic, cross platform, tale of one-downmanship, where kids outboast one another about how tough they have it, ‘Nothing Beats A Londoner’ aimed to capture young London authentically; real kids, real language, true stories, cult locations and a supporting cast made up of London’s most influential sporting and cultural figures.

A world first blend between social media and film then saw our stars launch the 3 minute London epic through the youth, to the youth, on their own Instagram channels. On the day schools broke up for half term, grime legend Skepta posted the opening scene of the film on his Instagram. This kickstarted a battle of one-downmanship across London as one kid at a time commented on the previous one’s post with a film of their sporting hardship.

Once this social media battle had rolled out and kids were engaged on Instagram, the sum of the parts came together and the full film was launched to the world. This was followed by bespoke GIFs, Snapchat stickers and ‘swipe up’ Instagram Stories, all designed to engage the kids and direct them to sign up for free sporting events across the city so that they could spend their school holidays being active.