Nike Shoppers Can Now Test-Run Sneakers on a Treadmill Hooked Up to a Video Game

When you're running on a treadmill like a compulsive little hamster, or just going about your daily business, you may imagine yourself as the star of your own modern Super Mario-style video game, bounding across a brightly colored screen and leaping dexterously over obstacles to rack up points. But lucky folks in China have the chance to be just that, thanks to a delightful little stunt from Nike and Wieden + Kennedy Shanghai. To highlight the characteristics of the shoe maker's new "Epic React" model—which contains technology the brand describes as bouncy, soft, light and durable—the agency set up a rig that let consumers test drive the shoes with a special video game called "Reactland." [kickout id="1"] In the case study video, players arrive at the glowing venue, lace up a pair of sneakers and step in front of a camera to create a digitized avatar. Then, they hop on a treadmill in front of a giant screen and jog away, leading a pixelated version of themselves across a variety of landscapes from around the world—over city rooftops, through forests and deserts, past dancing giant pandas and the Great Sphinx of Giza. A handheld trigger controller lets them jump the their characters onto springboards and over planes, presumably to further reinforce the bounciness of the shoe (without the safety and liability implications of asking people to actually jump while on a treadmill). In all, it's a fun, interactive and memorable way to demonstrate the product, and a great on-brand twist on the 8-bit-runner marketing category. Naturally, participants get a 10-second video of their gameplay so they can share it on social media. The game is available for visitors to try in select stores in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu. It's also consistent with Nike's general efforts in recent years to gameify even solo sports like running through its app ecosystem, though taken to its extreme, that could start to look uncomfortably like Black Mirror. In a broader sense, that theme—running as a form of play—might've started even earlier, with a famous TV ad back around 2002. [kickout id="2"] [kickout id="3"] [kickout id="4"] CREDITS Nike China VP Marketing: Steve Tsoi Senior Director of Brand Experience: Simon Lee Director of Greater China Brand Communications: Che Lin Senior Brand Manager: Miao Wang WIEDEN+KENNEDY SHANGHAI Executive Creative Director: Ian Toombs, Vivian Yong Creative Director: Okan Usta, Hesky Lu Art Director: Josh King Copywriter: Aier Xu Head of Integrated Production: Sanne Drogtrop Creative Technologist: Rhys Turner Interactive Producer: Xiong Xiong Producer: Fang Yuan Tech Developer: June Xie Senior Planner: Leon Lin Planner: Carina Huang Business Director: Dino Xu Senior Account Manager: Qinna Ye Senior Account Executive: Xueer Ren Head of Project Management: Nicole Bee Business Affairs: Jessica Deng, Kathy Zhan Head of Designers: Fish Ho Designer: Helen Yu PR Manager: Evelyn Hsu External Credits: Production Team Executive Producer/s: Marc D'Souza Producer/s: Yi Nong Dong, Martino Butti Project Manager/s Feodar Voloshin, Mengwei (Grace) Guo Creative Team Game Director: Alexander Horton Creative Director: Yifei Chai Pixel Artists/s Gustavo Viselner, Bruno Moraes, Romain Courtois Game Designer: Jakub Jakubowski Art Director/s Karol Goreczny, Mariusz Kucharczyk Product Design: Yu-Chang Chou UX Lead: Silvia Massotti Designer: Mitch Fernandes 3D Model: Julien Didisheim Character Animation: Virgil Tanasa Character Rigging: Brian Horgan Sound Design: Jamie Finlay (Sound Designer) Development Team Tech Lead: Andrew Oaten Hardware Developer/s: Christian Bianchini FE Developer/s: Payulina Banasiak-Pietraszek, Kostas Tsergoulas Head of QA: Dominic Berzins Other Staff QA Staff: Tom Watson, Rozzie McCann, Adam Mingay, Evi Nathanaili, BE Developer/s: 31ten (WeChat integration) FE Developer/s: Maja Matusiak Tech Support: Maciej Dudek, Jorge Esteves, Ivan Tchekashkin, Cristian Bovino, Alexandre Schnoebelen, Senthil Seveelavanan Producer/s On-Site: Lin (Rainie) Ma, Bei (Bella) Yu, Ming Xuan (Vincent) Zhang Production Assistant: Rose Hung Post Production - Animation Company: Dirty Robber Executive Producer: Jason Puris Producer: Jamie Qualtrough Creative Director: Nick Frew Animator: Hombre McSteez Editor: Oliver Riley-Smith Creative Studio: Curious Beast EP: Colin Brown Producer: Colin Brown Director: Dante Zaballa Lead Animator: Dante Zaballa Sound design: Josh Derry

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Nike Shoppers Can Now Test-Run Sneakers on a Treadmill Hooked Up to a Video Game

Digital avatars and a jump trigger from W+K Shanghai

Gabriel Beltrone

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Gabriel Beltrone