Dream Crazy
Nike2018
Dream Crazy is a 2018 two-minute film and outdoor campaign for Nike, created by Wieden+Kennedy, Portland.
The line
Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.
Why it works
The defining case of brand risk in the social-media era. For Just Do It's 30th anniversary, Nike made Colin Kaepernick — the quarterback unsigned after kneeling during the anthem — the face and narrator of a film about impossible ambitions, under the line "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything." The backlash was immediate (burned shoes, boycott hashtags, presidential tweets); the results were historic: massive earned media, reported billions added to brand value, and a sales lift in the days after launch. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Commercial in 2019, Cannes Grand Prix in Outdoor and Entertainment for Sport, and the 2021 Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix once the business results matured. It is studied as the moment brand purpose stopped being a safe strategy and proved it could be a commercially rigorous one — when the stance authentically matches the brand's 30-year story.
Techniques
- Purpose and cause Takes a public stance by making a quarterback left unsigned after kneeling during the anthem the face of its anniversary campaign, accepting the backlash.
- Testimonial and endorsement Kaepernick fronts and narrates the film, lending his own sacrifice to a message about chasing impossible ambitions whatever the cost.
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