BRAND FILM, SOCIAL LIVE STREAM (2017)
Nike’s Breaking2
The quest to break the 2-hour marathon barrier.
Eliud Kipchoge is one of the fastest marathon runners in the world. In 2017, he teamed up with Nike for his first sub-two hour attempt in Monza, Italy. Though he missed the mark by just 26 seconds, it was an enormous feat that brought millions together to champion human potential. At Wieden + Kennedy, Simone worked with a team to promote the entire feat, supported by a hype trailer to elicit anticipation and a short film series that contextualized just how fast a two-hour marathon truly is to excite diverse audiences.
“I would say that Breaking2 was my best race because I was running against something no one had done before.” - Eliud Kipchoge
The event was a marketing success, increasing brand love and top-of-mind brand conversation.
To execute the live event digitally, the Wieden and Nike teams partnered with Twitter and YouTube. A custom Nike Vaporfliy Elite shoe emoji was created for Twitter, the hero shoe Eluid and respective runners wore in training and on race day.
There were 13.1M people watching the attempt live on YouTube at peak. In the first 7 days post event, Nike was mentioned more than 580K times across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The official hashtag #Breaking 2 was used over 407K times, had over 2 trillion impressions, with over 80% positive sentiment.
Later, Nike went on to release a feature-length documentary on the event in partnership with National Geographic.
Role: Brand Manager.
May 2017, Wieden + Kennedy.