Situation: Caitlin Clark was about to break the NCAA’s all-time scoring record. With all eyes on Caitlin and a rush of excitement for women’s college basketball, we needed to find a way to cut through the congratulatory noise and speak to the true magnitude of her achievement.

Brief: Show the world that Caitlin’s unique way of playing made breaking the all-time scoring record an inevitability.

Objective: Capitalize on the excitement around Caitlin breaking the NCAA Overall Scoring Record and insert Nike’s POV into the moment in order to amplify conversation online, while joining in with on-the-ground celebrations in Iowa City.

Media Insight: Develop attention-grabbing, high visible OOH in Iowa City to give something special to Iowa fans while ensuring everyone in the world remembers who Caitlin Clark is.

When most of the world was focused on the fact that Caitlin Clark would break the all-time scoring record, we found ourselves fascinated with how she was doing it. Caitlin is a 3-point specialist whose game often garners comparisons to NBA star Stephen Curry’s time at Davidson College – an apt comparison given that this season she broke the record he previously held for most 3-pointers made in a season.

Caitlin regularly takes shots from so far away that they resemble other players’ desperation heaves – the only difference being that she consistently makes them. People would call you crazy to take these types of shots unless you were Caitlin Clark. We saw this moment the same way: even attempting to break the all-time scoring record would be a mind-blowing feat.

That is, unless you were Caitlin Clark. In which case, “This Was Never A Long Shot.”

Target Audience: Caitlin Clark / Iowa Hawkeye supporters & basketball fans across the country

Media Planning: With the campaign idea of ‘This Was Never A Longshot’ confirmed, the media team looked for a way to bring the idea to life with OOH in a signature Nike way. We searched throughout the Iowa City landscape for the perfect locations to showcase the creative idea.

Approach: Impact options in Iowa City were limited. But as we reviewed potential locations, we located the perfect placements to recreate Caitlin's long distance shot, by using buildings on opposite sides of the street for her and the hoop respectively. The key goal was to make Caitlin as large as possible, which led to our final selection of a custom 7-story apartment building wrap. We were more nimble with the basket banner so that we could reveal our line in real-time after she broke the record.

We didn’t know when / where Caitlin would break the record. But we took a risk, and bet that at her scoring pace she would break the record in Iowa City for her final home game. We scouted an apartment building and public parking garage just a block from campus that were perfect for our creative team’s two-building concept. With 14 days to go, we sent out requests for approval from the building’s owner and the city. We got approval in less than 24 hours.

A joint effort between our company and Nike, the University of Iowa, and local city government resulted in the installation of a 7-story banner and an accompanying backboard banner on buildings with zero pre-existing infrastructure. Our Caitlin banner went up the day before her game to create buzz, and we then dropped the second banner revealing the campaign line immediately after she broke the record.

Our OOH execution in Iowa City helped weave Nike into the fabric of Caitlin’s record-breaking moment, signaling Nike’s support for her in a larger-than-life manner. Just a block away from the campus - our execution surprised and delighted Iowa Hawkeye fans and was covered by all local media outlets and featured in the national broadcast of her game.

The execution also drove a huge reaction online, becoming a part of culture for Caitlin’s moment. Major sports publications including SB Nation, Bleacher Report, and Yahoo Sports covered the OOH, people remixed it in online social posts, and many prominent basketball personalities including Sue Bird, Draymond Green, and Caitlin herself posted it.

We earned 11.8M earned impressions and views on Twitter and TikTok alone. In total, we saw 22.3K social media posts and online article mentions for ‘Nike’ + ‘Caitlin’ with a 73.5% positive sentiment, more than double Nike’s benchmark.