NIKEiD School Shoe Builder Contest

Creative Direction, UX Designer, Agency Owner

overview

Ted Billups creative directed and led a team of UX designers, developers, marketers, managers and 3D artists to create a Nike approved shoe builder for 18,000 high schools to leverage their unique school pride, and Nike to sell custom shoes to a niche 12-17 audience.

When

2010-2013

Who

Ted Billups, Charles Stevenson, Ryan Nasipak

services

Creative Direction, UX Design, Web and Native implementation

services

"Your user centered creative direction and software design for my work at United Airlines, WMS and Scientific Games was integral to our success. You set realistic expectations, met tight deadlines, delivered against our vision and business goals, and were way ahead of the software industry in so many ways."
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R. Robbins
UX Director at United Airlines, WMS Gaming and Scientific Games

client

Nike's NIKEiD partnered with HighSchoolSports (Gannett) and Billups Design to envision and create a successful contest.

challenge

To attract tomorrow’s athlete, Nike expanded their core target younger to include 12-17 year olds. To reach this elusive teen online, Nike wanted to promote the “build your own shoe” functionality of NIKEid.com on HighSchoolSports.net.
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To engage with them, BD focused on key audienceinsights. Today teens: 1. share a need for self-expression
‍2. look to their peers for recognition and approval
‍3. socially interact online with expertise and high UI standards
And especially important, teen athletes are members of “school team tribes” with mascot and school colors.

solution

To tap into these motivations, BD leveraged the site’spowerful database of 18,000 high schools to create The NIKEiD “Show YourColors” Contest. The contest set up a“School vs. School” and “Shoe vs. Show” online rivalry and let teens:

use the NIKEiD Shoe Builder to pick a Nike SKU and create their own personal design
upload it to their school’s “SYC” page for peer review
recognize great designs by casting votes for their favorite

The four most popular designs would win NIKEiD gear foreach designer and their chosen school team. To drive awareness and clicks, BD created dynamic “DESIGN.VOTE. WIN” ads and “Show Your Pride” school pages that pulled unique mascot names and colors. And collaborating withR/GA, BD built an exciting online experience that integrated the NIKEiD shoebuilder with school “tribes” across the country.

impact

How did this colorful battle of teen “tribes” turn out?The NIKEiD “Show Your Colors” Contest created a splash on HSS.net for 45 days. It generated:
• over 2000 shoe designs and contest entries
• over 65% of entries from teens
• over 200,000 votes for favorite designs
And the Billups code enabled Nike to view detailed popularity data of each shoe.

NIKEiD "Show Your Colors" school vs school, custom shoe design contest for 18,000 high schools

Contest landing page: users find their school to start designing shoes. Billups was the first agency to integrate with the new Nike Shoe Builder software API.

Contact Ted Billups