BITE Insight

R/GA London’s latest campaign for Nike, On Demand, sees them creating a personalised, one-on-one exercise service for athletes, bypassing the current lean towards chatbots and embracing the reality that people still want to talk to other people. They realised that users were moving away from public platforms towards the private side of digital services, from Snapchat to Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

Nike and R/GA London created a human service, offering one-to-one advice from expert to athlete over WhatsApp, keeping the athletes on track to achieve their fitness goals. The service allows for direct conversation between the athlete and a Nike trainer, including personalised training plans, nutrition advice and motivation.

Nike realised that the hardest thing for athletes was to stay on track. So they designed a bespoke, data-driven platform to connect the athletes with the very best that Nike had to offer. The athletes were in daily communication with the Nike trainers and experts over WhatsApp. Data was collected and analysed twice a day, allowing the guidance to be optimised in real time.

When the activity of the athlete dropped, different motivation techniques were tested using the data that had been collected to build the individual’s profile. As the user initiates a conversation with Nike, their profile begins to form and is saved on the Nike database. From the profile, a real-time, tailored service is then created for each athlete.

The campaign allows for genuine, human interaction, encouraging people to change other people’s behaviour. As the video says, “No bots. Just data and experts, having a chat”.