The Campaign

‘Run It’ is an original song and sport-driven music video with fiercely empowering lyrics that celebrates inspiring elite and everyday athletes who refuse to be limited by outdated social norms. It features those who represent the rarely seen side of modern Korea that’s impossible to ignore; a champion female boxer and North Korean refugee, Korea’s first major black model, a heavily tattooed female in a country where tattoos are illegal, and a dancer who challenges gender roles, amongst others.

Creative Execution

The track had a “soft launch” at an exclusive Nike event, where guests and media personnel were invited to see a live performance by the Jay Park, Jessi, and Woo WonJae. Anticipation around the track built through the release of unofficial videos of the performance, along with teaser content on artist channels. Days before the launch, a :60 cut-down of the film was first released on artists’ Instagram feeds to add more hype around the official track drop. The track was later released on Melon, with the full music video being released on artists’ YouTube and Nike YouTube. Within days, the airing of the full 2:45 spot on national TV after the nation’s most popular show, Infinite Challenge, gathered a lot of attention and fueled discussions online. When launched, Run It quickly trended on Korea’s popular music streaming service, Melon, and ranked #1 in the popular digital music charts.

After 2 weeks from releasing this video: 37m+ views Over 1,500,000 hours of airplay #1 in digital music charts Nike trended on Twitter and Naver Song hit #1 on Melon +13% Nike.com traffic increase 500+ UGC video submissions

The track was created through collaborating with popular, yet unique artists in South Korea who have a voice with our targeted audience. We identified four artists, Jay Park, Jessi, Woo WonJae and Gray as the best partners to bring the campaign idea to life given their unique and individual qualities as people, role models and musicians. The partnership between Jay Park and Jessi was considered surprising and fresh because their individually strong brands was new, and mixed well under the Nike messaging.

Korea is perhaps the world’s most connected country with nearly 93% internet penetration and 84% of people active on social media. Senegis are some of the highest users of all. So not only did Run It need to be something that could be shared across platforms but it had to stand out from the multitude of content created by the Korean music industry each week.