Nike Football Pro Genius
Nike Football
Issue 41 | December 2016
Agency
AKQA
Creative Team
Creative Director Toby Burnett Associate Creative Director Adrian Stannard Design Director Carlos Matias Senior Art Director Pedro Vilas Boas Senior Designer Lionel Agbadou Designers John Leigh Antonin Collard Copywriter Rob James
Production Team
Game Designer Ben Gonshaw Senior User Experience Architect Joe Robinson Head of Film Quiche Campbell Senior Motion Graphics Designers Andy Briscoe Peter Menich
Other Credits
Senior Account Director Alex Aidan Account Director Mike Sinnerton Community Managers Janak Jani Jack Lodge Account Executive Joe Cooper Senior Project Manager Daniel Brown Head of Web Development Andy Smith Senior Technical Delivery Manager Simon Brunton Technical Delivery Managers Gabriel Novoa Stephen Smith Principal Web Developer Alex Falcoeiras Creative Development Director Emile Swain Associate Creative Development Director Paddy Keane Senior Web Developers Karen Chui Stuart Robinson Serhii Kocherev Dmytro Yastrebov Mihnea Belcin Creative Developer Kathryn Webb Principal Software Engineer Robert Gilks Software Engineer Veronica Garcia Quality Assurance Managers Sanjay Hari Jeff Brutus
Date
June 2016
Background
In elite football, fine margins separated the good from the truly great.
Modern training was both advanced and holistic, resulting in precious little difference between the physical, tactical and technical attributes of players.
However, one great differentiator remains – the mind. That's why the world's best footballers trained their brains.
Idea
Nike Football Pro Genius was a revolution in football training: a series of tools and techniques, which took a year to develop. Each was designed to help young players work on the mental side of their game.
It featured five training tools: Counter Attack, Priming, Cross Anticipation, Visualisation and Self-Talk – all exclusive to the Nike Football App as a mixture of interactive mobile games, audio tools and inspirational video content.
The tools were developed with the world's best footballers and renowned sports performance psychology and mind training experts.
Also a part of the #sparkbrilliance campaign, Cristiano Ronaldo starred in "The Switch", a film which showed what happened when he changed brains with a young fan.
Results
Nike Football Pro Genius exposed young footballers to the importance of mental preparation in relation to performance. Marking Nike's first foray into mental conditioning, 2.6 million Nike Football App users gained instant access on release day. The launch plan leveraged the power of Nike athletes with their combined social media reach surpassing 500 million people.
Our Thoughts
Nike has an entire ecosystem of its own, tapping into its stars' social media profiles as well as having its own database of millions.
Cristiano Ronaldo alone has 62 million followers on Instagram and 43 million on Twitter.
Its reach is so extensive, the brand hardly needs to advertise any longer. What it does so brilliantly is create experiences like this, which make it an intrinsic part of people's lives. In giving so much to its fans and followers, Nike manages to receive a great deal too – net sales in 2016 have been valued at $32.38 billion.