Creative Execution

Right after Liu Xiang announced his retirement on Sina Weibo, China’s biggest social media platform, Nike responded with a provocative point-of-view by posting a photo gallery of Liu Xiang’s body parts, revealing him as an ordinary guy with extraordinary beliefs, along with our hashtag #EvenTheOrdinaryCanFly#. When the social conversation exploded using Nike’s POV, we launched a web-film to further add fuel and pay tribute to his world record. We followed up with a social salute the next day, rallying young people across China to upload and share their tribute to Liu Xiang.

In just 2 hours, #EvenTheOrdinaryCanFly became a Top 5 trending topic on China’s biggest social media platform, Sina Weibo. After 24 hours, we had over 90,000 engagements from celebrities, influencers and media who re-tweeted the post and shared our point of view. The topic #EvenTheOrdinaryCanFly# was commented on 67,000 times. And more than 65 million people read content containing Nike’s POV. In the following days, key news networks that shape popular opinion adopted Nike’s point of view when reporting about Liu Xiang’s retirement. Articles of him being the ordinary boy with extraordinary beliefs popped up everywhere. We had rewritten history.

Liu Xiang, China’s first Olympic Gold medalist in a running event, shattered the myth that Asians could never compete on the track. He was a hero. But his recent failures meant China’s memory of him was of faded glory, mixed with disappointment and shame. Our challenge was to create a retirement salute worthy of this great champion’s legacy and inspire the next generation in the process. To do this, we knew we had to steer the conversation away from negativity. So we stripped back the extraordinary but flawed superhero image the media had built up and focused on what made China fall in love with him in the first place. His ordinariness. An ordinary guy who had an extraordinary belief to change the world in 12.88 seconds. By reframing the way people looked at Liu Xiang, we enabled the nation to see him with renewed fondness, emotion and empathy.