Nike published last week an application on Youtube (as the post-it and shoot the bear ) that puts together video, games and information and marketing.
You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/nikefootball
In may 2010 we saw a series of videos under the title “Write the Future” made to promote the Nike challenge.
This year Nike shows again the way that we can follow in interactive video. Firstly Nike presented this video last friday, May 18th.
Next monday, it had reached already 9 million views. At the time of publishing this post, it will probably have more than 11 million (in less than 1 week).
Besides, on Nike’s page on youtube you can access the aplication that uses that same video. There, that video in enriched with additional content and goes beyond simple audiovisual comsumption and increases the impact on the user, as well as the possibilities of becoming viral when viewers recommend it to their circles: https://www.youtube.com/nikefootball
This example is a great mixture of good design, a very well conceived user experience and above all, a high-quality content:
- It takes advantage of the ability provided by youtube to embed their videos on other websites(someting that does not happen with customized applications by now). This way, the video is conceived not only to be a part of the interactive application, but also as a stand-alone experience.
- At the end of the video, using the video annotations that are embeddable, it offers the possibility to “discover the tunnels” and watch additional content . As football moves a lot of passions, it is not difficult to drive the users to the application on youtube.
- It increases the possiblities of brand awareness, as well as awareness of Nike’s products, and the emotion they bring.
- Tracking and statistics: Nike can see if the users prefer or Cristiano Ronaldo, or other players. The application registers the users’ clicks (I suppose it does) and it can mesure not only when the user clicks on the additional contents but also how much time they spend whatching them.
- Online sales: At some points of the video -within the additional content- there are links to nike’s online store, but the whole experience is not conceived as a tool for selling. In any case, if they get to sell 0,5% of the number of views, it would not be a bad deal.
- It includes corporate information about Nike that a lot of viewers ignored before watching the video
(Nike Football Academy, the chance to attract talented players and was promoted with the 2010 campaign, the t-shirts made with recycled plastics, new lines of products…) - Besides that information on Nike’s products, the application shows games and tests to provide a higher level of entertainment and improve the possibilities that the corporate information is actually watched.
Going to the technical stuff, and leaving the flash-not-flash discussions apart, the application is also prepared to preload the different components in a separte way and includes versions to adapt to the available broadband (for instances, for the first 30 seconds of the video, there are 3 versions of 2,9, 5,4 y 7,2 MB)
To sum it up, this is a great example of effective interactive video. It is true that the subject is very emotional and the budget is not small. At the same time, it is not an easy to execute project. It is one of the only companies that provides a brand experience of this kind.
More on Nike’s marketing strategies on wikipedia and this advertising agency: Wieden + Kennedy (I have not found if WK has made this particular project, but in any case, these guys do also great campaigns)W+K has already published on the London Office’s portfolio this project for Nike.