Nike going mobile

With their own WAP site, Nike also joined the band wagon of brands targeting the youth. Following the footsteps of Lee, Nike comes out with their own wap site which is more of a tactical incentive till the world cup. Since their new ad is making waves on TV the users are now able to view the same commercial on the handsets. The full 120 second TVC can be now downloaded to you mobile. Just SMS NIKE to 7007.

Apart form the TVC the user get wallpapers showcasing their new Team India T shirts, Themes and the tune from the commercial. The ring tone of the commercial comes in both Polly and mono tone. The only problem is that the TVC take some time to download (Which completely depends on your GPRS connection). Second is the tunes does not sound that great as it does in the TVC, since they have to be compressed and doing so looses quality.

Even though WAP just being an extension of the Web and the content being noting out of the box. There seem to be a huge demand for mobile application downloads. Nike received around 140000 downloads in just one month. To make the numbers happen no advertising was done on traditional media. Ads were placed on Youtube and other networking sites giving instructions on how to go to the WAP site for cool free downloads.

The WAP site has helped brands in reaching the youth and it seems that India has reached a critical mass on this medium, however we are still far away from Japan, UK and the US where 3G has taken over the mobile space.

Nike and the agency have done a great job promoting the game (Cricket) on all mediums possible, it too bad that our players can’t do the same in keeping the expectations of a billion people. With India out of the world cup there may be chances that we may not see lots of action from this brand for some time.