The data collected from 50 Million+ Nike+ users showed that the hardest thing for athletes is staying committed to their goals over time. So we created Nike On Demand: a data-driven, human-operated 1:1 mobile messenger-based service that adapts to athletes’ needs on the fly and connects them with the best of Nike (athletes, coaches, content, etc.) to keep them on track.

We tagged conversations to develop rich unique user profiles: 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.

This was all totally invisible to the user.

From their perspective, we just become one of their friends on WhatsApp.

We didn’t just develop relationships; we developed friendships.

Users shared their goals, their doubts, even their holiday photos with us

For six weeks, Nike experts and coaches in the Nike On Demand Service Centre responded to athletes’ messages. As messages came in, the content of each message was analysed and deployed to the right Nike expert so they could lend the relevant expertise.

The users’ 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.

These insights then formed recommendations for what bespoke motivation or part of the vast Nike performance ecosystem to send to users:

Bespoke training plans

Personal advice from elite coaches and athletes

Meaningful reminders

1-to-1 training sessions with pro athletes

Motivating kicks in the ass

VIP access to sold out Nike Training Club classes.

Personal congratulations

All delivered on their terms, through chat.

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.

83% would recommend Nike On Demand to a friend.

81% would use the service again.

70% expect this type of service from Nike.

Athletes referred to Nike On Demand as their “guilty conscience” and their “workout buddy”.

At the end of the campaign, it was like saying goodbye to a friend: “No! You can’t go!”

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 users began conversations, we developed their unique profiles with a tagging system built into our bespoke profiling interface. This way, different experts could seamlessly pick up a conversation where another had left off and deliver a personal, genuinely human experience, not the stale messages of an automated chat bot.

The data gathered during service “office hours” was collected and analyzed twice daily, with teams in the US working though the European night hours to turn around actionable insights for the morning shift.

The user’s qualitative messaging sentiment and quantitative activity data 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 perfect Nike services (e.g. a Nike Training Club classes), experiences (e.g. a private training session with a professional athlete) and products (e.g. the right apparel or footwear) for each individual user.

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.