For years, Nike’s global Air Max Day initiative has spawned a series of branded events, conversations and workshops in sneaker-happy cities all over the world. But since it wasn’t possible to do anything like that in 2021, Nike came to Stink Studios to create a virtual experience that could surface all of those local events to a global audience online.
The result was Air Max Day Worldwide, a members-only, 24-hour experience that featured exclusive timed events from fifteen participating Nike geos, over 100 pieces of original content, a live stream from the Nike Campus, a virtual 3D guided tour of an athlete’s closet, exclusive content from Travis Scott, and more.
This AMDWW experience leaned into the notion of travel as a shorthand for discovery and exploration. After signing up for a Nike.com account, visitors to Air Max Day were encouraged to create an AMDWW profile (customized with their favorite silhouettes, of course) and navigate between fifteen city pages, uncovering new content and timed events along the way.
As they moved from one city to the next, users accumulated city stamps and virtual miles in a shareable digital passport that kept a record of their virtual travel throughout the day.
In addition to the headline events, which we localized for ten languages, each city page was imbued with design details and content unique to each location, including 3D animations, city photography, “tiny planet” 360 videos, and social lookbooks featuring local Air Max fans wearing their favorite shoes. All of this secondary animated and live-action content was created and produced in-house at Stink.
As part of the engagement, we also created a variety of other tentpole items, including a stylized short film about the history of Air Max, created in conjunction with the archivists at DNA, the Department of Nike Archives.
Not to mention a LiDAR-scanned 3D tour of New York Giants’ running back Saquon Barkley’s sneaker closet, complete with video commentary from the man himself delivered via hotspots.
Users also had the ability to chat with emojis during the events, giving the event a communal feeling that transcended language and geographical location.
5.7BVirtual miles logged in 24 hours