Nike has launched a new campaign called ‘Play New’ that strives to bring innovation and inspiration to every athlete. By athlete, they mean everybody, because to them, if you have a body, you are an athlete. The campaign emphasises the joys of moving the body, even if you are bad at it.
Nike shows basketball star Sabrina Ionescu, Paralympic champ Blake Leeper, sprinter Dina Asher-Smith, singer/songwriter Rosalía and others having fun by miserably failing at unfamiliar sports in the 60-second video.
“Give golf a go like world champion sprinter Dina Asher-Smith. Or take a swing at tennis like WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu. Step up to the plate with eight-time paralympic international medalist Blake Leeper or take aim at archery like award-winning artist Rosalía,” reads the description of the video campaign.
“Here’s to going for it and being terrible,” the video begins. “Here’s to giving it a shot, even though your shot is garbage.”
The point is that new experiences can prove immensely enjoyable and rewarding, even if you slip into the surf instead of shooting the curl, or skid off your skateboard onto the cold concrete.
Along with the anthem film, upcoming entries in Nike’s Play New series feature Ionescu and Asher-Smith discussing how their early failures (and successes) helped shape their careers and build character. These stories will highlight how sport has changed these athletes, and then how they have changed the world around them.
“Sport is one of the greatest ways to watch our growth as human beings,” says Nike global brand marketing VP Melanie Auguste. “As a kid, with my brothers, we would mimic the sports we saw on TV. One we did the most was the high jump. We had a bed with posts, so we would tie a string, and then we would take turns jumping over that. We would then go onto our cul-de-sac and run sprints. We had a pool, so then we’d try to do the butterfly. I’m pretty sure we were not doing it right. It was some form of just belly flops. All of that movement and play brought us so much joy.”
Nike will also seek to engage people to join in sport through its social channels as well, creating new ways of accessing sport through Snapchat and TikTok.
On Snapchat, Nike will introduce new Play New-themed full-body augmented reality Lenses to encourage people to enter a virtual world and try something new, like surfing, boxing, dancing, or yoga. The AR Lenses will contain persistent storage – a new feature from Snapchat – so users can return to the Lens to see their scores and progress.
