During research, we found that the pace at which young Londoners lived and consumed media was unparalleled. Constantly consuming bite-sized content, on the go. The myth of ‘short attention spans’ not only underestimates them, it misleads clients and creative marketing teams. This is a generation who are masterful curators of content.

Our demographic consumes long-form media too, but our job is to give them a compelling reason to do so (and do it fast). So, to engage them, content needed to be exciting and relevant; not just to London but to specific neighbourhoods in London. We needed to deliver it in a channel that would grab their attention, feel authentic and in a moment that mattered to them.

London-only media ran during February half-term (identified as a moment that mattered) on TV, Snapchat, Instagram, Xbox, YouTube, native digital, mobile and cinema (the 180-second ‘silver spot’ before Black Panther, the highest-grossing February film in history).

At the heart of the campaign were short video stories about real young Londoners. These worked both as a series and in isolation. We tailored the first story someone saw, and the platform it launched on, to the user’s geolocation. This first instalment was designed to grab attention and encourage click-through. But users were free to choose when to view the next instalment.

With 29 million completed views, many did choose to ‘tap to advance’. We deepened our understanding of the campaign, providing a suite of social assets to help supercharge engagement. These included never-before-seen sticker-packs on Snapchat, Nike London Avatars in Xbox and endorsements from icons such as Skepta and Mo Farah.

The campaign’s metrics surpassed client and agency expectations. Swipe rates on Snapchat were two times higher than the benchmark. On Instagram, the swipe rate was ten times the benchmark. On YouTube, those viewing the full 3 mins were almost 10% more likely to consider purchasing Nike. Remember the problem of wavering brand affinity? The true success of this campaign was its influence on addressing exactly that.

Brand affinity increased (“Nike understands the community I live in” increased by 7%. The percentage saying, “Nike understands people like me”, increased by 6%.) Brand awareness increased by 7% and brand preference by 3%. In some London boroughs, there was more than a 200% increase in the volume of brand mentions. Proving that after a dynamic 2-week campaign, young Londoners could ‘see, touch and feel’ the brand once more.

Informed by our insight of ‘pace’, the strategy ‘tap to advance’ was born. We’d place creative in real-world and online environments favoured by the audience. They could interact with any given piece of content, moving from one channel to the next, choosing how fast they progressed through the story. At each point, content served would depend on a range of cues, including engagement rates, content preferences, geolocation and retargeting. No two user journeys would be identical.

Knowing how often our audience accesses its favourite platforms let us remove the frequency cap we’d normally apply to a campaign. We tailored each piece of creative to its intended platform. Choosing social platforms, we put less emphasis on mass-audience and more on relevance. We used our research-based insights to recruit influencers who would resonate with young Londoners. To work, this campaign had to let our audience lead, not ask them to follow.

Nike is the top-selling sportswear brands among young Londoners. But long-term health of brand relies on retaining the loyalty of its young customer demographic. Research revealed that high-profile marketing campaigns built around athletes were not enough to secure this. "Nike will always be big,” said a kid who attended a focus group, “but it’s so big, we can't see, touch or feel the brand anymore”.

Our job was to reconnect Nike with 16-24-year-old Londoners. To do that, we needed to dispense with all the clichés and stereotypes about ‘Generation Z’. It was clear to us that this dynamic, diverse and sophisticated demographic was too often misunderstood. Too many middle-age marketers were still struggling to understand millennials, the generation before the one we needed to target. To reconnect Nike with its fans, we needed to really get under the skin of Gen-Z Londoners.