GAME CHANGER Curry MVP Activation

Jay Chiat Awards 2016

SUMMARY

This is not a typical strategy tale.

This isn't a story of an insight leading to a strategy leading to a creative idea.

This is a different story.

It’s a story where a strategy and a great idea are one and the same.

A story of a superstar athlete becoming a phenomenon, and one brand struggling to maintain its connection to him amidst the cultural frenzy.

It’s a story of how we went about changing that.

A story of how we took a cultural insight into an athlete’s sensational play and brought that idea to life in a way that millions of fans could tangibly experience. Of how we convinced a company to do something they’d never done before.

This is a story of game-changers.

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BACKGROUND

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0.08%

That was the market share that Under Armour, despite a decade-long presence in the category, had in basketball entering the 2014-2015 NBA season.

Then Stephen Curry, an athlete signed to their roster, blew up.

His breakout season finally gave the brand a superstar whose marketability and playmaking skills would contribute to soaring footwear sales and finally allow the brand to establish itself as a credible commercial threat in the category long dominated by Nike.

However, influence in basketball is about so much more than shoe sales.

Nike’s dominance was largely achieved by defining basketball culture. For three decades the brand has crafted larger-than-life stories that surround the players wearing their shoes. Michael Jordan became the best basketball player of all-time while wearing Nike. Kobe and LeBron became the megastars of their generation while wearing Nike.

Simply put, if Under Armour was going to seriously compete in basketball, it needed to go beyond selling shoes and connect to the larger culture of the game.

CHALLENGE

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Curry got too good, too fast.

On his way to winning the MVP and the NBA title, Stephen Curry became the most popular player in basketball and one of the most popular athletes in the world.

On the surface, this was great for us. We had the singular transformative player who could build the Under Armour basketball brand from scratch.

But his meteoric rise also presented us with serious challenges.

1) Other brands were swooping in to capitalize on his star power. 2) Everybody, on every platform, was talking about him. 3) We had limited investment allocated to put behind him.

Given these three factors, the brand was being drowned out by the cultural frenzy. Custom quantitative analysis confirmed our worst fear – people weren’t connecting Curry to the brand.

TOTAL MENTIONS OF CURRY

18.5M

116KTOTAL MENTIONS OF CURRY LINKED TO UNDER ARMOUR

OBJECTIVES

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How could we hijack the narrative with a runaway success story?

We needed a culturally relevant, non-traditional idea that would get people talking and connect Curry back to the brand.

Therefore, we had two key objectives:

1) Create a moment. 2) Insert the brand in that moment.

INSIGHTS

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Curry’s start to the season was special.

His shooting, already unrivaled, was even better. He was playing with contagious joy. His team was winning at a historic pace. And despite winning MVP the previous season, he was also the league’s most improved player – something never seen before in the history of the game. Experts from places such as ESPN, The New York Times and Rolling Stone were even writing about how he was literally changing the game of basketball.

Simply put, he was doing things in the game that no one thought possible.

Curry was even blowing Curry away.

Our initial work didn’t anticipate his transcendent level of play. Our media and production dollars were already committed. We wouldn’t have any access to Curry during the season.

But we still needed to find a way to bring his extreme improvement to life in a meaningful way.

INSIGHTS

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Gaming offered an ideal platform.

Our research showed that more than seven million fans played basketball video games every day.

It was clear that tapping into the gaming world would allow us to reach the most people, and have the biggest impact, with the limited funds and time we had.

More interestingly, our consumers had a voracious appetite for basketball-related content, and gaming played a starring role in their world. By capitalizing on their existing behavior instead of forcing our way into it, we could offer them a new experience and give them an active role in the idea.

We would own their gaming moment.

But how would we do it?

INSIGHTS

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Sometimes the smartest thing a strategist can do is simply pay attention.

By design, an athlete’s video-game self is capable of putting up more ridiculous numbers than their real-life counterparts – after all, gaming is supposed to be fantastical. But with the way Curry was playing, and with the absurd rate he was his hitting shots, it was evident that something incredible was happening – real-life Curry was actually better than video-game Curry.

As the season unfolded, our insight became a cultural narrative.

Fans debated online. Segments of shows became dedicated to the topic. Developers of the world’s most popular and realistic basketball game, NBA 2K, were being quoted in articles as evidence of how no one could have foreseen how good Curry was going to be.

What if we could demonstrate how much better Curry had gotten by changing the actual game?

By demonstrating how much better Curry had gotten through the context of gaming, we would give millions of basketball fans something they’d never forget while attaching the brand to the experience.

STRATEGY

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We would make video-game Curry better.

Our brief was prescriptive.

Let fans experience what it’s like to play like real-life Curry by making video-game Curry just as good. It was the idea,

And still, the creative team was incredibly excited to make it happen.

The question wasn’t what we’d do. It was, could we do it?

THE BRIEF

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2K told us no.

For years, brands had bought ad placements in NBA 2K video games, but this was something entirely different. No one in the 16-year history of the NBA 2K franchise had ever changed the actual game.

2K takes great pride in creating games that give players the most realistic experience possible. They’ve worked tirelessly to create algorithms that supply players in the game with individual ratings that closely match their real-life counterparts abilities. Their code is sacred and revered, so changing it would be a very, very big deal.

A huge challenge creatively was convincing them to go along with our idea. Initially, they balked. They said, “No way.”

We knew we had to be more conscientious in how we approached the game-maker a second time. We had to make them feel like co-owners of the idea and give them incentive to feel like they were getting something out of it too.

CREATIVE

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To get 2K on board, we sharpened the idea.

We decided to work toward Curry’s impending MVP victory. His speech would be the pinnacle of his unprecedented season and a time when the eyes of the basketball world would be fixed solely on him.

By focusing on this specific moment in time, we made it clear to 2K that the activation would only be temporary. Fans could enjoy it for a set period of time without the company having to change the fabric of its game or risk the integrity of its company.

Additionally, we made it overt that this was a co-celebration – Under Armour and 2K were going to come together to do something never done before. We would celebrate Curry’s MVP by letting fans play like MVP Curry.

We even hedged our bets by tapping data analysts to quantify the upside for them – which was sizable.

It was an opportunity they couldn’t turn down.

CREATIVE

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“GAME CHANGER”

Against the odds, we changed the game.

We worked with 2K developers to change the game code, raising Curry’s outside scoring ratings after he won his MVP to the highest the game allows.

Then, to get the word out, we created a video that imagined video-game Curry watching real-life Curry’s amazing season, reacting to Curry making all the unbelievable plays that video-game Curry’s programming wouldn’t allow him to make. At the end of the video, we announced the event to the world.

A 30-second version of the video aired during Curry’s MVP acceptance speech, and a long-form version ran online.

National press coverage and buzz led to 30 hours – a nod to Steph’s jersey number – during which 2K players could honor his MVP by playing him in 2K with his MVP skills for the very

ROLL-OUT

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SUCCESS

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LIKE CURRY’S SEASON, THE NUMBERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

7+ millionplayers took part in 52 different countries

156%increase of the number of people playing as Curry

200MMearned impressions in the course of 30 hours

19 hoursof user-generated content were uploaded to YouTube

2Ksaw the largest spike in gameplay ever

SUCCESS

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MOST IMPRESSIVE, THOUGH, WE DROVE 15 TIMES MORE MENTIONS OF UNDER ARMOUR AND CURRY.

We successfully got people talking about the brand and Stephen Curry, and gave them an experience they’d never forget.

Gamers in years to come will say, “Remember that one time when Under Armour gave us the chance to play like Curry on 2K?”

Mentions Linking Curry to UA

MVP AverageHistorical Average

2,159

32,716

THANK YOU