Freies Spiel – Owen Roberts

Introduce All Day Ballers to the world

In Summer 2017 Nike Football had a reset on their brand position. The audience of 'Football Obsessed Teens' (FOTs) was felt to be too performance focused, and had become cold and clinical. There was an opportunity to stand for both performance and culture.

'All Day Ballers' (ADBs) became the new consumer focus. Young people who love the game, play seriously be it a pick up game or a trial for a pro-club. Football runs through their culture, from the way they dress to the music they listen to.

The new consumer proposition – Play Free, or as it translates into German 'Freies Spiel' beautifully encapsulates this new cultural movement.

LA to Portland
Leroy Sané and his three friends; Emre Can, Thilo Keher and Toni Rudiger – all top German International players – were already planning a vacation to LA after competing in the Confederations Cup. We seized the opportunity to create the first 'Play Free' campaign and take an authentic look at what pro-ballers do on vacation.

We followed the guys for two days, in LA and Portland (Nike's Global HQ) having exclusive access to them. Friendship, laughter and banter. Always authentic and unscripted. We crafted four individual Instagram Stories for each athlete's own Instgaram channels, with no duplication of content, so you got to see four points-of-view on the trip as well as publishing Story and feed content on Nike Football's global channel.

The highlight of the shoot was capturing a Burbank Airport kick-about on the runway as they walked to the Nike 'Air' Private jet – which flew them to Nike's Portland HQ. We dropped a follow up piece of content on their social channels when the guys all returned to Europe cut together by German Football influencers 'Freekickers'.