Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

This campaign is relevant for this category because at the heart of the idea is a unique, easy to use digital experience that allows our audience, young basketball fans, to create their own player logo, which is every baller’s dream ever since Jordan’s Jumpman. From there, the campaign turned into celebrating our fans and their logos, and gave one lucky fan a pro-athlete treatment, just like Mike (Michael Jordan, that is).

Background

Basketball as a sport experienced massive growth over the past few years in Australia, as more and more young Aussies made their marks into the NBA, the biggest basketball league in the world. The brief was simple, create a campaign that extends on its ‘Culture of Basketball’ global brand strategy, and allow Foot Locker to connect with these basketball fans in Australia and New Zealand, through its House of Hoops brand. And do it without any reliance on the big NBA superstars.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

Every young baller’s dream is to be just like Mike (Michael Jordan, that is). And we did just that, from creating their own ‘Jumpman logo’ to seeing their designs printed on shirts and shoes, to an NBA-media-day-like photoshoot and seeing themselves on billboards all around the country – we simply gave our audience the opportunity to be just like Mike. In-time for the NBA Finals this year, we launched ‘House of Hoops Mark of Greatness’

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

To connect with the young baller fans, we know that we need to talk to them in a different way than your standard ‘put an NBA player on a billboard’ approach. We know to connect with this audience we need to create something that’s more than a standard campaign featuring the NBA stars, after all we don’t have access to these global superstars. More than just inspiring them, we knew that we needed to tap into the culture and go a step further in helping these audiences to follow and get them closer to their dreams. Ever since Michael Jordan’s ‘Jumpman’ turned ballers into brands, every basketball fan has wanted their own player logo. As the sport grows exponentially worldwide, it’s still only the game’s most elite players like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant that get the chance to have their own signature logo. Until now.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

At the heart of House of Hoops Mark of Greatness, is a state of the art interactive design tool that lets fans create their player logo in a few simple steps, with little or no design experience. Simply enter your initials and a monogram is automagically combined to form a symbol. The tool then integrates 100s of fonts, colourways, icons and shapes to let fans design their own unique personalised logos that look just like the pros. Through digital and social, fans are encouraged to share their logo on Instagram for a chance to win a personalised player edition pack. The top ten designs also got their logos up in lights on street furniture around the country. One lucky winner was given the full pro-athlete treatment. We did a photoshoot and plastered them around the country in high impact billboards along with his winning logo.

List the results (30% of vote)

With minimal media budget, and some organic support from Foot Locker social, the campaign had generated over 240M impressions, 870K+ views on YouTube, and saw a whopping 5.3K completed design with average design time of 90s – huge considering that 94% of our traffic is on mobile. Even more impressive was the 36% uplift in site traffic to the House of Hoops retail website. More than a campaign, House of Hoops Mark of Greatness has allowed everyone to now create their own player logo, and a step closer to be just like Mike (Michael Jordan, that is).