We wanted to inspire every type of athlete during the 2016 Games with one thought: unlimited potential. “Unlimited” was an inspiring call for athletes to keep going beyond their limits, and then going beyond this limit in really fun, exciting ways.

The Unlimited Future activation launched the idea by proclaiming to every athlete, “You don’t decide how your story begins, but you do get to decide how it ends.” By highlighting the humble beginnings we all share as small children, Nike set out to put all athletes on a level playing field, with unlimited potential as a common denominator.

Nike’s Olympic campaign started with 216 elite athletes taking to Twitter and Weibo to share stories of limits they’ve overcome. By using the hashtag #justdoit, a branded shoe emoji appeared, a symbol that anchored the Olympic-long campaign.

As athlete stories flooded newsfeeds, the largest first-view and promoted trend activation went live, showcasing Nike’s “Unlimited Future” film, making it the #1 conversation topic in 22 countries.

To connect with everyday athletes, we maximized our partnership with Twitter to test the limits of data targeting. Together Nike and Twitter co-developed an alpha targeting platform called “Iris” which mined the entire history of Twitter data to identify everyday athletes with an affinity towards sports and Olympic interest.

By creating custom clusters, we were able to follow up with our most relevant audiences with an alpha version of Twitter’s Moments ad – packaging tweets from the 216-athlete launch into cohesive, personalized stories.

Nike’s pre-Olympic blitz was successful, reaching everyday athletes and owning the conversation. Through the Unlimited Future activation, Nike increased their “share of conversation” by 45%. We dwarfed the nearest competitor, Adidas, by owning 61% of all brand-related Olympics chatter to their 18%.

On launch day, #justdoit was the #1 trending hashtag in 22 markets, and “Unlimited Future” became the most shared and liked Nike film on Twitter ever. Use of the hashtag jumped by 5x when Nike athletes started to share their stories, and peaked at an incredible 52x when paid media kicked in.

By using the power of Nike’s roster of elite athletes, the “Unlimited Future” story earned 24M organic impressions and 1.4M organic engagements across top athletes like Neymar Jr, Gerard Pique and Serena Williams, driving over $600K in added-value.