Every year to mark Black History Month, Nike have traditionally released an exclusive, limited edition BHM sneaker. But after the summer of protests, and the company announcing a $40M donation to the Black community, they wanted to do something more.

Nike’s Purpose Studio came to us asking how could they do something different and meaningful for the Black community, and particularly for the younger, more marginal, intersectional Black communities.

Perhaps more so than other corporations across America, Nike felt an obligation to the Black community, not least because many of their top athletes are from the community.

Our objective was to not just deliver on the brief, but to find a solution that could help push Nike towards achieving their larger mission. Beyond the brand talking about their social justice initiatives, this mission was to help drive systemic change for the future. The brief was called Future Movement.

Our idea was to create a pirate TV station from the future that transmits a monthly talk show featuring BIPOC stars of sport and culture, together conversing about how we can move into the future we dream of. We called it FM Broadcast.

Hosted by civil rights storyteller, Janaya Khan, the show’s tagline read: “You are tuned into FM Broadcast, celebrating Black futures in sport and culture.”

The idea took inspiration from pirate radio, guerilla TV, retro-futurism, as well as the art, fashion and music associated with Afro-futurism.

When Covid restrictions eased, we took the show on the road and broadcast an episode from St Elmo’s Village, a location of historical significance to the civil rights movement.

A few show highlights include: Naomi Osaka talking about being Haitian and Japanese, H.E.R. talking about activism, and John Carlos reflecting on raising his fist at the Olympics.

We set out to turn Black History Month into Black Future Year, with our content living across Nike’s social media ecosystem.

Instead of a one-off, shoe drop moment, we wanted to create a movement that could make a real difference in the world.

We set out to build community around an episodic series that champions BIPOC athlete/activists. We focused on the often overlooked issues that matter to them, and, more importantly, that matter to the young people watching. We wanted to allow them to see themselves and feel seen.

We wanted to connect with the young girl out there, waiting to hear her heroes talk honestly about these issues, so that she can better understand her own, and unlock her potential.

We were briefed in late January/February, and spent a month fleshing out the idea before beginning pre-production in March. In April we shot the pilot episode, which was so well-received by Nike that they awarded us a full season of 6 episodes. We subsequently kicked off a rhythm of episodic series production that had us prepping, shooting, and editing episodes for the remainder of the year.

It was crucial to us for this show to be for the Black community and by the Black community. As such, we made a point of always looking to champion BIPOC talent; from the directors, to the creatives, to the crew, to the editors, to the musicians we worked with.

YouTube was the obvious homebase for the 8-12 minute long-form version of each Episode. However, we also created a suite of original shoulder content pieces published on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.

- 140 million total video views

- 32 million YouTube views

- 1.5 million YouTube hours watched

- 40% of viewers identified as youth (18-24)

- Resonated best with BIPOC communities as the top performing audience, accounting for 23% of clicks across platforms.

- 25% of viewers watched the full episodes. Outperforming all other Nike series.

In February 2022, a year after we were briefed by Nike to reimagine what their Black History Month shoe drop could be, the brand launched a Future Movement-inspired Black History Month collection. Only this year, that product drop was only one part of a full ecosystem of content and community that we built around it.

Nike then went on to commission us to do a second series of FM Broadcast, due to launch in May 2022 and run throughout the year.