London, a city like no other; home of the unbeatable. But not for some. While many thrive in London, there are others who feel the pressures of life, pressures that became magnified during the pandemic. With life being put on pause for kids worldwide, it was time for Nike to not only showcase the strength of the Londoner spirit once again and in doing so prove the power of sport.

Show the power of sport by taking one lost kid on a sporting journey like never before. A real 30 day sporting challenge that pushes them out of their comfort zone and into a world of sport and support.

We looked to reach the youth of the city (Gen Z, 16-24) in a way that had never been done before, identifying the need to appear on platforms where young Londoners spend their time and, more importantly, pay attention.

A new kind of sporting documentary by Nike. Taking one young Londoner on a journey of self-discovery through sport. Rather than an advert we created a real story. A real sporting challenge. A real time line.

We gave Tu’Shea 30 days to go from complete novice to jumping off the 10 metre diving board (yes, the top one) at Crystal Palace in front of hundreds of his friends and family.

We turned Tu’Shea’s journey into a 23 minute long documentary, New Heights: London (a Nike Original), and Channel 4 licensed the documentary from Nike and aired it as a program on their network, meaning that we reached more kids in a more poignant way than ever before.

Nothing Beats a Londoner showed sport as a superpower, this project was a chance to prove it.

For kids growing up in London pressure and impossibly high expectations are everywhere. For many sport is no different. Nike wanted to change this, to prove that sport can be a place where you can gain the confidence you need to take on life.

Objectives:

Build salience for Nike amongst London’s youth through the power of sport.

We chose to make a full documentary out of Tu’Shea’s story because we wanted to show the highly emotional, and personal, journey that Tu’Shea went through. We knew if we were to create an ‘ad’ it would be ignored by our target audience, and we also wanted to highlight both the ups and downs of Tu’Shea’s story.

We positioned the documentary as ‘A Nike Original’ so that viewers knew what to expect when watching; a long-form piece of content, with high production values and genuine emotional film-making.

This elevated New Heights: London above any other advertising our audience will have seen from any other brand, and even elevated it above any Nike ad they had seen before. This helped us cut through with an audience who is notorious for their short attention spans, as well as demonstrating Nike’s commitment to world class sporting stories.

Nike’s brand love with Londoners aged 18-34 grew by 24% during the period New Heights: London was live, and Nike’s overall brand health grew by 17% in the six months after airing.

New Heights: London demonstrated to the youth of London that when you have sport in your life nothing can stop you. And above all else, Tu’Shea went on a journey of self-growth, finding a confidence within that he didn’t know existed.

The documentary outperformed Channel 4’s most popular docu-series by 237%, and significantly outperformed popular youth shows on E4 by +332%. We hit our objective of reaching younger viewers, with Gen Z driving 54% of total audience, 4 million total views and 18 million impressions.