NIKE | RISK EVERYTHING | 2015
The ad that kept running throughout the whole World Cup / NIKE "RISK EVERYTHING"
Every time something happened in a World Cup match, Nike was moving right along with it, in 22 languages at once. This wasn't really a commercial — it was more like a giant newsroom that stayed operating nonstop for a whole month.
The problem
At the 2014 Brazil World Cup, Nike wasn't an official sponsor. Even so, it was a brand that always rolled out huge marketing efforts around major tournaments, and following 2010's "Write the Future," this campaign was positioned as its successor, built around the theme of the pressure individual players carry.
The insight
At the center of it was a paradox: those who don't take risks end up mediocre. The idea that you have to take every kind of all-or-nothing gamble to win was extended beyond star players to even kids kicking a ball around in the park.
The idea
The campaign unfolded around three films: "Risk Everything," depicting star players facing down pressure; "Winner Stays," which turned a pickup soccer match into something as intense as the World Cup itself; and "The Last Game," an animated film about battling an army of perfect clones. But what actually won gold this time wasn't any single film — it was the operation itself: a 24-hour system running for 30 days straight, delivering these stories in real time across multiple platforms like ESPN, Xbox, Facebook, and Weibo, in 22 languages, throughout the tournament.
What happened
These two films, "Winner Stays" and "The Last Game," together racked up more than 370 million digital views. The campaign won Gold in the Media category at Cannes Lions 2015.
Afterthought
What's amazing about this campaign isn't that they made one great commercial and called it done — it's that they built a whole system to keep running alongside the tournament for as long as it lasted. Reacting in 22 languages as matches unfolded isn't something a typical ad shop would even think of. Back in 2014, Nike was already showing us the moment advertising shifted from being a single "piece of work" to becoming an ongoing "operation."
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2015
