We haven’t heard Nike’s wonderful voice tone for a while – the friendly conversational voice that encourages. The voice Bradley Cooper used to remind us that we all have possibilities in 2013 and Nike continued to use to make us think we could all be athletic stars for many years afterwards.
Well, we can’t. Some of us suck at sports and some of us just suck at new sports. Nike is welcoming both into the fold.
The new Wieden + Kennedy commercial, Play New, is full of epic fails, epic fails by elite athletes Sabrina Ionescu, Dina Asher-Smith and Blake Leeper, and award-winning artist, Rosalía. Its aim is to encourage people to try new sports, to experience the joy of sport anyway.
Melanie Auguste, vice president of global brand marketing at Nike, stated, “Play means joy. It represents pure enjoyment and being able to just be free. All kids play. That’s just a natural thing they do.
“The reason we are encouraging people to Play New, is to celebrate that notion of getting back to the joy of discovering and trying something for the first time, the joy of letting loose a little bit. Sport is one of the greatest ways to watch our growth as human beings.”
She added, “Sport becomes a vehicle for you to get to know yourself, to be comfortable with yourself, to be confident, to try concepts out that you will use in the world.”