As part of it’s “Dream Crazy” campaign, Nike wanted to create a campaign that reconnected the brand with it’s female audience in a way that was authentic to this moment in history. It was important that the work didn’t ignore the social context, and instead made a statement on behalf of women everywhere.

If a man speaks up he’s called “passionate”, while a woman is called “unhinged”. If a man gets angry he’s “determined”, while a woman is “hysterical” or “just being crazy”. Our idea was to call attention to this double standard through the lens of sport, and celebrate the female athletes who have defied these labels. The campaign is voiced by Serena Williams (who herself was branded "unhinged" after the US Open).

With the launch of its “Dream Crazy” campaign at the start of the NFL season, Nike kicked off a 30th anniversary re-examination of what made its Just Do It tagline so enduring. Urgent, plainspoken, and unrelenting, Just Do It had long been a call to act with the force of your convictions, no matter what conventional wisdom told you. “Dream Crazy” set a template and touched a nerve. With the stage set, Nike wanted to keep up the pressure by turning the campaign’s lens to the way women have used sport to challenge the limits placed upon them and prove its not crazy to imagine a future for women’s sport better than present. Nike’s great women’s campaigns of the past had earned it a measure of loyalty from many female athletes. And the hope was that we could honor that by upping the ante on what Nike had previously done.

The campaign kicked off with a 90-second film that calls out this double standard and celebrates female athletes who have defied labels to do the impossible. Voiced by Serena Williams (who herself was branded "unhinged" after the US Open), the film was launched on her social channels before the full film was launched during the 2019 Oscars. This was then followed by an OOH campaign that blanketed major cities across America, and social media tools that enabled young women to lend their voices to the campaign.

Immediately the film and campaign struck a chord with women around the world, becoming the topic of more than 29 major broadcast segments and 100 unique organic articles. It was shared and championed by female powerhouses like Alicia Keys, Katie Couric, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Amy Schumer. It was shown on TV by Ellen, on social media by other brands like Barbie, and even inspired a feature article in the New York Times titled "Taking Back Hysterical". To date, the campaign has received more than 370 million media impressions, 88 million views and the film outperformed every film on Nike’s Instagram ever. Nike had a +300% conversation lift on social and more than 70K #justdoit mentions.