Sport Wonderland
View the case- Brand
- Nike
- Year
- 2023
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Platform
- App
- Agency
- UNIT9
Objective
Nike wanted to introduce young women in China to a different idea of sport — one built on creativity, imagination and self-motivation rather than performance targets. Commercially, the experience had to carry Nike's presence through Taobao's SuperBrand Week, giving shoppers a reason to return to its store every day of the seven-day event.
Solution
Players open Sport Wonderland from Nike's Taobao storefront and move across an interactive map of a surreal virtual world, with a new stop unlocking each day over the week-long route. Along the way sit three short mini-games built on physical input rather than taps on a menu: smiling at the camera sends a character sprinting through an AR street run, tapping in rhythm drives a HIIT session, and breathing in a square pattern grows a small garden for a quiet meditative break. Each mini-game pays out in "motivation" boosters, which the player collects and carries into the next day's visit. The boosters feed a rewards hub, where players trade them for things to share and incentives to shop Nike product — the hook that pulls them back into the map for tomorrow's stop.
- 1
The player enters Nike's SuperBrand Week promotion on Taobao and is dropped not into a storefront but into Sports Wonderland, a surreal virtual world full of sparkle and fantasy imagery.
- 2
An interactive map guides the player along a seven-day route: it does not open all at once but reveals a new destination each day of the campaign, and the world offers no instructions, so the player taps and pokes at objects to learn how each one reacts.
- 3
Exploring the map's points surfaces sports trivia as a reward for curiosity, and clearing points earns "boosters" (the game's "motivation" currency), the core resource that unlocks further progress along the route.
- 4
The first mini-game is an AR run controlled entirely by the player's smile, read via the front camera: smiling makes the character run, and holding the smile longer makes the surrounding world more fantastical and raises the character's mental-state meter.
- 5
The second mini-game is a tapping HIIT workout: the player taps the screen as fast as possible to speed up the character, and sustained effort unlocks a bonus level framed as the payoff of focus and persistence.
- 6
The third mini-game is a box-breathing exercise that paces the player through inhale-hold-exhale-hold on screen, growing a virtual zen garden as a calming visual reward for completing the cycle.
- 7
Rewards earned across the map and mini-games are brought to a rewards center where they convert into prizes, pushing the player to share the experience, browse and buy Nike products, and return the next day of the campaign.
