Jordan is an iconic sportswear brand created for former NBA player and six-time NBA Finals MVP Michael Jordan. Decades after Jordan’s career, the brand aims to redefine the future and introduce a new era of sports fans to shoes made famous before they were alive.
When ESPN released “The Last Dance,” a miniseries following Jordan’s last season with the Chicago Bulls, it was the most anticipated documentary of the decade, and with COVID-19 halting live sports around the world, the series received even more attention. We knew this was our moment to introduce young fans to the story behind the legend, reestablishing equity in the brand’s namesake.
At a time when people were starving for sports, millions tuned in to the docuseries, and we gave them what they wanted: a way to rally around a shared moment of inspiration during trying times. While ESPN led the conversation about “The Last Dance” on screen, we headed online to extend it through social media. By doing so, we not only brought this community together around sports, but we introduced them to the history of our iconic sneakers. This moment acted as a springboard to move from Jordan, the man, to Jordan, the brand, by appealing to this new generation’s desire for relevant stars and interactivity between themselves and a brand.
This was the biggest moment for Jordan Brand since Michael left the game of basketball. As “The Last Dance” reminded everyone why Michael is the best ever, we elevated the conversation, using this as a moment to show how Jordan Brand represents greatness.
We did this by bringing the biggest names in sports culture together to share their POV on Michael, telling the stories of those who were inspired by him and are now blazing their own trail, and heroing the iconic products that continue to drive streetwear culture.
Additionally, at a time when people were craving connection during a period of isolation, we created opportunities that not only brought our digital community together but invited new members to get involved. We were able to do that by turning the one-way viewing experience into a live weekly social event that offered isolated sports fans an opportunity to engage.
This included four touch points over the course of 5-weeks. To kick things off, we allowed Bomani Jones to take over the @Jumpman23 Twitter handle to live-tweet his reactions during the inaugural episode of “The Last Dance” which aired on Sunday. On Monday's we hosted The Encore, a one-hour weekly livestream across Jordan’s social platforms—Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok—resulting in 25 total videos, including episodes and trailers for each show. On Wednesdays, we wanted to inspire our audience by bringing them closer to our Jordan influencer with ‘The Family,’ a three-part show about how our influencers are taking their passion for basketball culture (fashion, art, and the game) to new heights. Finally, on Friday, we invited our audience from all over the world to show their love for the brand and their own personal style through #InMyJs. This activation allowed us to amplify those who make our brand special and reward them for their dedication throughout the course of our programming.
This was a massive production on a very tight timeline. When the pandemic hit, ESPN moved up the release of “The Last Dance” from June to April.
We took the campaign from concept to execution in 13 days, including casting 18 major talents to star across the content, all of which required identification, outreach, negotiation and logistical planning to facilitate shooting safely at their location.
On top of that, production requirements were changing in real time, and to bring this to life during the pandemic, talent had to shoot their own content. We created production kits and remotely trained each talent on how to capture content.
Our objective was to use “The Last Dance” to welcome in a new and younger generation of fans to our brand. We did this by turning the one-way viewing experience into a live weekly social event that offered isolated sports fans an opportunity to engage, measured through engagements, video views and social conversation.
Over the five-week campaign, we drove over 8.5M total livestream views, 22.6M video views and 10M engagements, generating an engagement rate of over 8%. We continued to amplify the conversation by giving our community a platform to show their love for the brand, specifically our iconic sneakers, by using #InMyJs. Our call-to-action resulted in an 123x increase of hashtag usage, successfully creating an opportunity to amplify and reward our community like never before.
We connected the Jordan community through the story as it was unfolding – successfully introducing a new era of sports fans to shoes made famous before they were alive and celebrating the fact that Michael Jordan’s legacy off the court is far from over.
