2012 Make it Count Campaign from Nike

Hi everyone,
Nike has launched a campaign for the new year, suggesting that we all step up and ‘Make It Count’. The campaign stars a number of the UK’s top athletes making personal pledges for 2012.

It then encourages everyone else to join in on Twitter, by announcing their own goals via the hashtag #makeitcount.

Created by Wieden + Kennedy London and AKQA, the campaign includes a series of posters shot by photographer Adam Hinton, which show the athletes at the most intense (and at times painful-looking) moments during training.

Each athlete’s pledge is then written on top of the image. These vary from the straightforward – “Don’t dream of winning. Train for it.” from Mo Farah – to the stark: Paula Radclliffe’s poster simply states that “nearly isn’t enough”. In addition there is a series of online films, directed by Joe Roberts, expanding on the theme. Mo Farah and Rio Ferdinand’s films are shown here.

As well as being shown on poster sites and online, Adam Hinton’s portraits will be displayed in Nike’s 1948 store in Shoreditch, London from January 18. “We wanted to show the sheer hard work and determination these athletes put into the sports they love,” says Hinton of the images. “To be at the top of their game requires enormous amounts of blood, sweat and tears and they train hard, pushing themselves to the limit to get there.”

There will also be a further in-store component to the campaign at Nike’s flagship London stores in Westfield Stratford City and Oxford Street, where shoppers will be photographed alongside their own handwritten pledges, with the resulting images displayed around the stores.

While no mention of the Olympics is made in the ads (Nike is not an official partner of the Games), the theme of the campaign and the decision to use UK athletes only makes it difficult not to link it to the event.

One can only hope then that the notorious ‘curse of the Nike ad’ (seen most clearly in the 2010 World Cup, where virtually all the football stars featured in Nike’s campaign were either injured or underperformed) doesn’t happen again here for them… [Source: Creative Review]

Karl Lusbec