The middle east is a region full of avid sports fans, but short on sports participants. The climate, the culture, the lack of experienced coaching and infrastructure all mean that there isn’t a ready base of recreational athletes for Nike to simply inspire to ‘just do it.’ This had severe health impacts in the region, and in 2013 Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and UAE had the highest rates of diabetes of any countries in the world. Our brief was to not simply sell more Nike, but to increase the levels of sports participation amongst children in the region. To build a long term customer base but also assist in reducing a health crisis.

Rise of the Kids gave the kids of the Middle East a voice they had never had, and with that voice showed their parents the joy and power of sport.

At launch we researched the most common reasons parents gave for not doing sports and created a film Rise of the Kids in which kids spoke back for the first time.

Next we created Five Minutes More, the first storybook designed to be read by kids to their parents, rather than vice versa, to help them negotiate with their parents for more playtime.

Finally we launched The School of Play so kids could invite their parents to try out new sports with them.

Rise of the Kids was more than a campaign, it was a cultural movement, built on an insight about the generational paradox and the need for kids to show their parents the power of sport.

Our strategy was born from a research trip to Dubai. We spent time with kids dance groups, sports clubs and schools. Then with families, seeing how they lived and interacted. It was this trip that unearthed our first insight, a generational paradox in the Middle East around sport. Kids today have grown up with sports, but their parents didn’t. Parents today therefore often see sport as a distraction.

Our time with families also showed us that no matter how much the kids loved sport, they didn’t have the voice to negotiate with or convince their parents. Our second insight was that we needed to create moments of dialogue between children and their parents. So parents could see through their children's eyes the joy and power of sport.

This was a campaign designed to shift long term perceptions and participation as much as short term sales metrics, but we were delighted to see the Nike kids business in the Middle East grow 10% across the first week of the campaign. Whilst the long term attitudinal and participation tracking isn’t in yet we know our campaign cut through beyond paid media earning an additional media value of $284K across the campaign period. We also saw 15K digital downloads of our book Five Minutes More along with 5K physical copies distributed across schools in the UAE and KSA. We also got 3K kids moving in the School Of Play and our anthem film racked up 48.5M views during the campaign. But the response we loved the most was this from @mohtohsoh who said, “I have never felt this represented.”