Decades of athlete data showed us that the hardest thing for athletes is staying on track. So we created Nike On Demand: a data-driven, human-operated 1:1 service on WhatsApp that keeps athletes engaged over time, adapts to their individual needs on the fly and connects them with the best of Nike: everything from 1-on-1 training with professional athletes to VIP access to sold out Nike experiences.

The more athletes told us about their goals and aims through the Whatsapp chat the more we were able to create rich tailored athlete profiles and serve athletes effectively via rapid connection to the Nike network and ecosystem of existing products and services.

That way, Nike On Demand was able to deliver truly bespoke personal creative that made the most of WhatsApp’s functionalities - personal messages from elite coaches and athletes, images of bespoke training plans, congratulatory gifs, etc. - all delivered on their terms,

As soon as a user began a conversation, we began developing their unique profile with a tagging system built into our bespoke profiling interface: everything from their sport and level to their tone and sense of humour. This way, different experts could seamlessly pick up a conversation where another had left off and deliver genuinely personalized messages, not the stale messages of an automated chat bot.

The user’s qualitative messaging sentiment and quantitative activity data was gathered during service “office hours” and analyzed twice daily, with teams in the US working though the European night hours to turn around actionable insights for the morning shift.

Those insights then formed the basis of bespoke motivation and training plans, with the experts in the command center tapping into the entire Nike ecosystem to serve up the relevant Nike services, experiences, and products for each individual user.

Over 6 weeks Nike On Demand enabled 240 athletes to take their game to the next level, exchanging over 22K messages and connecting athletes with pacers, trainers, run coaches, reminders, private classes, 1:1 sessions, training plans, playlists, app challenges, product trials, VIP bookings, coaching tips, and a whole heap of ass-kicking motivation.

Here’s what users thought:

83% would recommend Nike On Demand to a friend.

81% would use the service again.

70% expect this type of service from Nike.

Most importantly, we delivered thousands of nudges and calls to action that changed athletes behavior, got them more active and helped them take their game to the next level.

Nike On Demand is a mechanism for producing a response, building relationships and influencing ongoing consumer behavior in a way that nobody has ever done before.

It leveraged mobile messaging platforms to create and enhance deep personal relationships with consumers.

The more we learned about users, the more tailored our calls to action became and the more effective they were.

We challenged all Nike members in Berlin to unleash their potential.

More than we could support answered the call.

As soon as users began conversations, we began developing their personal profile using our bespoke tagging and profiling interface. Over time, we got to know each of them individually and our motivations became more personalized both in form (e.g. if they used a lot of emojis, we used emojis) and content (e.g. training plans tailored to their level).

And by building rich individual user profiles, different Nike experts could seamlessly pick up a friendly conversation where another had left off without the user even noticing.

All of the users’ qualitative messaging sentiment and quantitative activity data were aggregated and analyzed twice daily, and the insights gleaned from these analyses then enabled Nike experts to provide each user with highly effective motivational content, tailored for them personally.

In Germany, Nike was seen as a cool product brand, not as a performance partner. So Nike’s objective was to disrupt the marketplace by serving athletes like never before in Adidas’ stronghold of Berlin.

At the same time, we were witnessing a significant audience migration away from public social media-based conversations to the closed world of private messaging: e.g. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. This was particularly pronounced in Germany, where privacy is paramount.