Integrated.

Nike needed to distance itself from Adidas as the world’s number one football brand.

Our strategy was to create entertainment that could span three months instead of a mere ad campaign. We started with a point of view on football—inspiring footballers to be fearless even when pressure is greatest.

At the height of football season, we launched with Men in the Arena. It showed athletes preparing for a big game despite external distractions and pressures.

We followed up with the launch of Winner Stays. Then on the eve of World Cup, we launched The Last Game, an animated film showing how Nike’s athletes saved the world from predictable football. The animated world was also used to celebrate on-pitch success as it happened. Fans were also invited to create their own content using the environments from our film.

Results were off the charts, with unprecedented online engagement and exceptional sales.

The brief from Nike was in part to reinvent marketing. By creating an entertainment platform and building a command center that was operational 24 hours a day for 30 days and by writing, producing and creating real-time messaging and deploying it in the moment through social media, we believe we achieved this. But crucially the results support this:

The campaign got over 410 million views on YouTube and included the most watched brand film of 2014. Risk Everything was Facebook’s most shared brand post ever.

In March, Men in the Arena launched. Targeting football obsessives online, and in key markets on TV, it established Nike’s Risk Everything idea globally.

A month later, the second phase began with city attacks, online takeovers and a film, Winner Stays, in the Champions League semi-finals.

The Last Game launched on the eve of the tournament. Teased through athlete’s social channels, a short film was then revealed to our core audience in their native social and video platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, XBox, ESPN.com) for them to share.

During matches we responded with animations and stills created in real time. Partnerships created scale through digital OOH, mobile - using an exclusive Google ad unit to help people create custom memes, and TV with an animated Zlatan Ibrahimovic providing “live” commentary for 26 nights on SportsCenter/YouTube.

After the tournament we launched product films featuring animated athletes across athlete and Nike social channels.

The business challenge Nike faced was to put distance between itself and Adidas as the world’s number one football brand in preference and market share.

Nike has a proud history of great advertising, but the brief for this campaign was to reinvent marketing for the social age and in doing so separate Nike from both Adidas and all the other brands using the World Cup as a platform.

We knew from research and our love of the game that despite loving risk-taking athletes such as Neymar and Ronaldo, young players were no longer being taught to play to win, but to play not to lose. As a result they were taking fewer risks.

Risk Everything was a point of view that would encourage footballers to play daring, exciting, phenomenal football. It embodied the values of fearless brilliance that exemplify Nike Football.