Nike - Never Done Evolving, ft Serena
Nike, collaborating with AKQA, needed to celebrate Serena Williams' unparalleled career and inspire future athletes following her retirement announcement. The goal was to showcase her continuous evolution and reinforce Nike's commitment to innovation and athlete development.
Creative Idea
AI avatars simulated Serena's career evolution, culminating in a virtual match.
Nike leveraged AI and machine learning to create a virtual match between 17-year-old and 35-year-old Serena Williams, dramatically visualizing her career evolution and inspiring future athletes by decoding the path to sustained greatness.
The AI Match That Predicted the GOATs Evolution
130,000 Games to Find a Winner
To determine whether the 1999 or 2017 version of Serena Williams would prevail, the team ran a massive simulation involving 130,000 games and 5,000 full matches. This generated enough virtual footage to stream continuously for an entire year. The AI eventually concluded that the 2017 Serena would win, citing her evolved mental toughness and superior serve placement. The project was a year - long study that adapted the vid2player system from Stanford University, re - rendering archival footage into a new scene where the two avatars could respond to each other’s shots in real - time.
A Global Collaboration of Studios
The campaign was a massive technical undertaking led by AKQA, utilizing a "radical" collaborative model between their Melbourne, Portland, and São Paulo studios. Production was supported by Studio Zebra for the 3D avatars and Hefty for sound design. The final match was broadcast as a YouTube livestream to over 1.69 million subscribers, resulting in a 1,082% increase in organic views compared to Nike’s average content. It remains Nike’s most - viewed organic video on the platform.
Narrated by Zendaya
While the AI match focused on data, the broader "Never Done Evolving" platform included a retrospective film titled "By Changing Nothing, She Changed Everything," narrated by Zendaya. The campaign launched on August 11, 2022, just two days after Williams announced her retirement in *Vogue*. Beyond marketing, Nike is now utilizing the machine learning data from this study to improve product technology and enhance the performance of future athletes, shifting the use of AI from simple efficiency to deep sports science.
Creative Strategy Deconstructed
Company
Nike possessed Serena's career data and partnered with AKQA and Stanford for advanced AI and machine learning capabilities.
Category
Sports campaigns often highlight peak moments; this broke norms by visualizing an athlete's continuous, data-driven evolution over decades.
Customer
Fans and aspiring athletes sought to understand the journey to sustained excellence and be inspired by a legend's continuous growth.
Culture
Serena's retirement announcement created a cultural moment for reflection, amplified by growing public fascination with AI's potential.
Company
Nike possessed Serena's career data and partnered with AKQA and Stanford for advanced AI and machine learning capabilities.
Category
Sports campaigns often highlight peak moments; this broke norms by visualizing an athlete's continuous, data-driven evolution over decades.
Strategy:
Dramatize an athlete's enduring legacy through technological innovation to inspire future generations.
Customer
Fans and aspiring athletes sought to understand the journey to sustained excellence and be inspired by a legend's continuous growth.
Culture
Serena's retirement announcement created a cultural moment for reflection, amplified by growing public fascination with AI's potential.
Strategy:
Dramatize an athlete's enduring legacy through technological innovation to inspire future generations.
Results
The campaign achieved significant engagement and media reach: - The 'Never Done Evolving' virtual match broke all of Nike's organic views records on YouTube. - Organic views increased by +1082% (or x1034%) from Nike's YouTube benchmark. - The campaign garnered extensive mass media coverage across various platforms including Yahoo!, The Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg, AdAge, The Telegraph, Flipboard, Front Office Sports, Tennis Coaching, Sport Sevn, Nation World, Little Black Book, and more.
+1082%
increase in organic YouTube views
130,000+
games generated for virtual match
Widespread
mass media coverage
Strategy Technique
Turn Data Into Drama
The campaign transformed Serena's vast career data and machine learning insights into a dramatic, engaging virtual tennis match. This made her evolution accessible and emotionally resonant for fans.
Explore Technique
Creative Technique
Cutting-edge Tech
This campaign utilized advanced AI and machine learning to transform complex career data into a compelling, accessible virtual match. It made Serena's evolution tangible and inspiring for a global audience.
Explore Technique
Craft Breakdown
This campaign's craft is exceptional due to its pioneering application of advanced AI and data visualization to decode an athlete's career, transforming complex data into a visually compelling and interactive experience.
The entire campaign is built upon advanced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, which analyzed decades of Serena Williams' performance data to create accurate virtual models and simulate matches.
The campaign brilliantly transforms complex tennis statistics, player movements, and strategic insights into visually engaging and understandable graphics, making the scientific study accessible to a broad audience.
The creation of lifelike yet data-rich 3D avatars of Serena Williams at different stages of her career, and their seamless integration into virtual tennis match simulations, showcases high-level 3D modeling and animation.
The campaign establishes a distinct, futuristic, and tech-driven visual aesthetic through its use of holographic effects, wireframes, vibrant neon colors on dark backgrounds, and glitch effects, creating a unique brand experience.
