China lacks a running culture. To most people, running was a punishment they experienced when they misbehaved at school growing up. While there is a small community of passionate runners in China, we wanted to find a broad message and voice to inspire people to reconsider the sport.

The idea was to tackle the ‘why run?’ question head-on. However we weren’t going to just provide one answer because each person has his or her own individual reason to run. So instead we told the diverse stories of authentic Chinese runners and encouraged people to ‘Let The Run Tell Them Why’.

Our audience was intrigued to find out what running may offer them and empowered them through our products and services to make it happen.

Instead of giving you a reason to run, we created content that will make you so curious and inspired that you’d want to find out for yourself.

Our digital interactive experience brought the audience into the run with anonymous runners and forced audiences to ask the question ‘Why run?’ At key moments within the film they were prompted to click on a runner and were then brought deeper into that individual runner’s story. We profiled a diverse group of authentic Chinese runners, with each film articulating why they love to run and how it has positively influenced their life.

Our goal for this campaign was to help move the sport of running in China forward. We managed to reach millions across China, with 10 million video content views, 78 million social impressions. We sparked waves of conversation with 200,000 comments and re-tweets, 209,000 #LetTheRunTellYouWhy# hashtag mentions. Most importantly our audience didn't just talk, they did something about it, with over 8,600 UGC submissions, 30,000 Nike WeChat Running app downloads to form 2,000 new run crews. In the end inspired millions to question their connection to the sport, by asking them to simply 'Let the run tell you why'.