Nike Uses Wearable Data to Recreate "Your Year"
Nike is drawing from athletes' Nike+ wearable data to compile one-minute personalized videos that summarize users' achievements and are shareable across social media.
Nike is drawing from athletes' Nike+ wearable data to compile one-minute personalized videos that summarize users' achievements and are shareable across social media.
Nike has been a pioneer in health and fitness wearables, and now the brand is proving it’s a pioneer in the data-driven marketing space as well. The Nike+ “Your Year” campaign capitalizes on user data by creating hyper-targeted video content from athletes’ wearable data.
“Your Year” uses location, weather, activity, and individual movement data to create unique achievement videos from Nike+ users’ wearable-enabled shoes. Member data has been adapted into more than 100,000 customized user films. Additionally, Nike and partner agency AKQA have used wearable data to compile achievement videos for four major cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto. Those videos combine user data to track the fitness success of every Nike+ user in the city.
Nike’s latest is one of the first video campaigns to target users based on wearable data. Benjamin Spiegel, director of strategy for GroupM, believes that athletes were a smart consumer base to test the waters of data marketing. “Athletes are competitive,” says Spiegel. “They do share their data to measure performance improvement and compete with each other. What Nike has done here is create a value exchange; they use your data, but in return you are getting value from them with these personalized videos and inspiration.”
This campaign is just scratching the surface of the possibilities for data-driven campaigns, according to Alan Cutter, chief executive (CEO) of AC Lion. “These days, we have blown past hyper-local to a very granular level,” says Cutter. “This trend has already been growing in importance over the years, and I do not believe its significance will be slowing down any time soon. If targeted campaigns take into account their audience’s interests and what really makes them tick, it’s a no-brainer that this is going to be more valuable than just casting the wide net and hoping something sticks.”
But as privacy concerns around data persist, brands must take into account that there is a fine line for consumers between “targeted” and “creepy.” Cutter believes that Nike has done a good job of respecting consumer privacy with “Your Year.” “The campaign does a good job not being too invasive because it isn’t advertising anyone’s personal statistics to the public,” says Cutter. “Sending Nike+ users the video directly gives the person a choice to share it or keep it to themselves. It’s very clever of [Nike] to push the social component on a user-by-user level.”