Brand
Nike ads
Nike's best ads, from "Just Do It" to "Write the Future" and "Dream Crazy", many of them made with Wieden+Kennedy.
All ads
-
2022Never Done Evolving feat. Serena
For Nike's 50th anniversary, AKQA staged a tennis match that could never happen: Serena Williams at 17, when she won her first Grand Slam title at…
-
2020You Can't Stop Us
Ninety seconds of split screen in which 36 pairs of athletes, elite and everyday, from Serena Williams and LeBron James to Colin Kaepernick and…
-
2018Dream Crazy
The defining case of brand risk in the social-media era.
-
2018Nothing Beats a Londoner
A three-minute film in which 258 young Londoners try to outdo one another's sporting feats across Dalston, Peckham and Brixton, with Mo Farah, Harry…
-
2016Unlimited Stadium
A running track where the opponent was your own last lap.
-
2010Write the Future
The biggest canvas sports advertising has attempted: a three-minute epic in which a single touch — Rooney's loose pass, Ronaldo's free kick —…
-
2009Chalkbot
Fans at the Tour de France have long painted messages on the road for the riders.
-
2005Crossbar ("Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold")
Ronaldinho laces up a pair of white-and-gold Nike Tiempo boots, juggles a ball towards the box and strikes the crossbar four times in a row without…
-
1992Hare Jordan
Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny team up in a gym to outwit a gang of basketball bullies, mixing live action with hand-drawn Looney Tunes slapstick…
-
1989Bo Knows
A product launch disguised as a tall tale.
-
1988Just Do It (launch spot, "Walt Stack")
Three words that outgrew sport.
Nike’s advertising
Wieden+Kennedy, whose offices in Portland, Amsterdam and London made the brand's biggest films, is behind much of Nike's work here. What holds the work together is less a look than an argument about who counts as an athlete.
Dan Wieden's Just Do It launched with an 80-year-old distance runner rather than a star. When Nike did use stars, it often let them be funny: Bo Knows ends with Bo Jackson being told he doesn't know Diddley, and Hare Jordan put Michael Jordan in a gym with Bugs Bunny. Later films return to the everyday athlete. Nothing Beats a Londoner cast young Londoners and reduced the famous names to cameos, and You Can't Stop Us paired elite and everyday athletes in split screen.
Nike treats its biggest films like releases. Write the Future launched on social media before airing during the Champions League final, and it framed the World Cup without Nike being a tournament sponsor. The brand also moved early beyond the commercial break: Ronaldinho's crossbar clip spread on a YouTube only months old, Chalkbot sprayed people's messages onto the Tour de France route, and a running track in Manila let runners race their own last lap.
The riskiest entry is Dream Crazy, which made Colin Kaepernick the face of Just Do It's 30th anniversary and drew boycott calls and a sales lift in the days after launch.