Every year, brands fight for attention around the NBA Draft. With college basketball more popular than ever, Foot Locker wanted to own the conversation and appeal to both basketball fans and sneakerheads.

To stand out on NBA Draft Night, Foot Locker created a product that basketball fans couldn’t resist. The “One and Done” T-shirt collection is named after the controversial rule in college basketball that lets players enter the NBA after just one year at college. The T-shirts, designed by streetwear artist Don C, went on sale for just one day, so they were also “One and Done” like the players. The collection was launched live during the Draft Night ad break, with a tongue in cheek infomercial featuring “One and Done” players from this year’s draft class.

College basketball is very popular with Foot Locker’s sneakerhead demographic. What’s not so popular is the controversial “One and Done”rule for college players. Some hate it, but some think it’s good for the game. Foot Locker saw this as a great PR opportunity to stir up some controversy on Draft Night. But rather than just make a funny TV spot, Foot Locker used their media buy to launch a T-shirt collection live during the ad break. To add to the PR value, Foot Locker cast real One and Done players and celebs for the commercial, including LiAngelo Ball, Trae Young, LaVar Ball and Reggie COUZ.

To give the T-shirts credibility, Foot Locker commissioned legendary streetwear artist Don C to design them. Then for the big moment of the campaign they were launched live during the Draft Night ad break. Just minutes after the first players got drafted, it cut to commercials to see real “One and Done” draft players Trae Young and LiAngelo Ball selling “One and Done” T-shirts that, like them, were only available for one night. The commercial also featured influencers Reggie COUZ and LaVar Ball who sweetened the deal by throwing in a free towel with every T-shirt (in true infomercial style). As well as starring in the commercial, the players and influencers in the spot tweeted and posted about the shirts on social, adding to the frenzy for the limited-edition T-shirts. In the lead-up to Draft Night, the T-shirts were teased with online films featuring the influencers.

T-shirts sold out in just 30 minutes, with 120,000 clicks to Footlocker.com. Within hours, some of the shirts were being resold at highly inflated prices on Ebay. They actually proved so popular that fake, bootlegged versions of our designs were being sold online in the days following the draft. By creating a product instead of just a commercial, Foot Locker earned over half-a-billion media impressions during the draft. The campaign achieved 21,000 campaign-related social mentions, and positive social sentiment for Foot Locker increased 200%. The controversial collection also achieved 37x higher click-through rate versus brand benchmark.