kobe iv ankle insuranceOnline campaign + banners

Nike Basketball designs shoes for the big name players in the NBA. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Lebron James all have their own line of shoes from Nike that ultimately fit their play style.

Kobe Bryant and Nike Basketball teamed up again to bring the fourth iteration of the Nike Zoom Kobe shoe line. In this shoe they wanted to try something completely different and incorporate fly wire technology. Instead of the traditional high top that was the basketball norm, Nike and Kobe decided to go for a low top shoe. This decision was a result from Kobe's ability to cut and pivot faster than most of his opponents. When you crossover an opponent and go the other way without them, this is called ankle breaking. This became the crux of the campaign.

After TV and print were sold, Nike Basketball was not happy with the digital solutions presented. I came to the project as digital liaison to Taylor Twist and Caleb Jensen. I came up with the idea to run the Ankle Insurance Co. as a real insurance company. What initially was a banner concept, the insurance claim became the landing page on nikebasketball.com. Since the claim became the site, I thought it would be interesting for Kobe to have agents in the field for his company. The business card would be the main catalyst for this. We invited users to enter their name, title and location in a banner and we provided them with a PDF of business cards they could print. The idea was that when they broke someone's ankles they could hand them a business card and tell them Kobe sent them.

Taylor, Caleb and I continued with the process after Nike Basketball approved the ideas. Nike took the insurance claims idea and gave it to R/GA as they were, at the time, more familiar with the NikeOS platform. For the banners, the design and development responsibilities went to Wieden + Kennedy.

When you crossover an opponent and go the other way without them, this is called ankle breaking.

The impact of this online campaign had more effect than just mass intrigue and sales. It demonstrated that Wieden + Kennedy could think in the digital space. Nike Basketball invested more and more in our ability to create digital concepts even if we didn't execute them.