The Campaign

Nike uses technology to bring elite training mothods to the masses. Nike created “Rise Academy” which is a basketball training platform where anyone can sign up to get elite coaching. Every session is conducted by professional coaches on 3 courts in Beijing,Shanghai and Guangzhou. Each court is rigged with video cameras to capture entire training sessions in multiple angles so that you can review your performance with your coach in detail. Coaches assess players in real time via an iPad app to review performance and 4 automated cameras installed on the court records every move, shot and pass during class and pushes footage to mobile devices sessions end. For players, the service seamlessly integrates their Nike and WeChat accounts, making it easy for them to receive assessments and video footage. Within this experience users can crop, tag, compare and share video highlights to the coach for 1on1 feedback and advice.

Creative Execution

Players enroll in training sessions with professional coaches or self-practice using check-in system via WeChat. At the end of each session players receive video and training scores to review performances. 10 second videos can be trimmed from the footage and shared on WeChat The system consists of the following components: -QunCRM platform in place to connect WeChat API and Nike custom backend system -Custom APIs for Rise Academy to support the on and off court experience -Coach app on iPad for coaches to grade players against drills. Scores were available to players post session. -An industrial computer and four industrial cameras were placed in each court. -An on-court video and encoding system captures videos in real-time, process and encoded for web delivery after sessions. -Videos are uploaded to Aliyun via high bandwidth Internet. -Aliyun was used as video hosting via OSS. CDN was employed to ensure video content is quickly distributed to major cities in China. -WeChat HTML5 build was implemented - video player (view/trim content); Events sign up (Nike Events API and Nike+ Login integration) and personal progress tracking. System is currently in the pilot stage, with constant testing being done as well new features being considered for implementation.

The experience can scale to as many courts as required (the custom backend is agnostic to how many courts the system can support). The technology can also scale to unlimited numbers of users watching the videos (use of OSS and CDN as autoscaling infra for video delivery) The system can also work without cameras and be used in even more cities across China through Nike organized sessions. Allowing assessments to be utilized without the need for cameras. All data can be access through the users mobile device.

An experience that is first of its kind integrating digital tools and components to provide elite coaching services to the masses.