Creative Execution

With over 2.8 MILLION daily active users, PM2.5 has become the go-to resource for all netizens – an app they check multiple times per day, before going outside. The cooperation was unlike anything seen before in China – when runners would check pollution levels, Nike provided guidance on how to exercise safely. If pollution levels were safe, Nike would connect them with Nike Running Club, recommending a run outdoors. But if pollution levels were too high, Nike would show them how to exercise indoors with Nike Training Club. Moment and location based targeting across all of China, delivered in real-time.

Over three months, Nike was able to deliver their message of how and where to run safely over 313 million times – at exactly the times and locations where runners would be most concerned. Across China, engagement on Nike’s running and training apps increased more than 300% compared to the rest of the world, despite record breaking air pollution. Most importantly for Nike, runners across the country were unanimous in their appreciation, as Nike’s and PM2.5 helped them exercise safely in one of the world’s most polluted environments.

What can Nike do when running outdoors in China will literally kill runners? That was Nike’s challenge to us at the end of 2014 in China, where air pollution levels have skyrocketed to levels considered ‘unsafe for laboratory experiments’ – as seen in the Under the Dome documentary that blazed across China’s internet. If runners couldn’t trust the air outside, how could we expect them to go for a run, much less buy new running shoes? To solve this impossible task we negotiated an industry first integration with AQI PM2.5 – China's #1 air pollution app.