Nike.
This year, Nike was inspired by those who play the game of sport and life differently. Starting with the House of Merc, a high-concept Soho pop-up that guests were invited to explore a few hours before it opened, where we were introduced to Mercurial Vapor 17 and Superfly 11, for which we would later have the opportunity to put to the test with a pick-up game at The Ground, an indoor football pitch in Chinatown. Dubbed “the lightest Mercurial ever,” the Mercurial Vapor 17’s intentional design was created for sharp cuts in tight spaces, made possible in part by its ultrathin FlyLite plate technology. Whilst an external Air Zoom unit provides for greater agility in the Superfly 11, as explained to us by the pop-ups’ designated sales associates.
Nike’s Football Universe extends far beyond product and technical innovations, however, with Toma. Hosted at a Wall Street event space, last week, with previous stops in Los Angeles and Mexico City, these come-one, come-all public events spotlight the next generation of local football talent amongst a crowd of cheering fans, family and friends, powered in part by local vendors and DJ’s serving free food, beverages and good vibes.
Over light bites at the Nike New York headquarters, a panel discussion between Camilo Andrade, Vice President and Global Management, Global Football, John Jowers, Vice President, Nike Brand Communications and Helena Thorton, Vice President, Global Brand Management, discussed the ethos behind the Nike Football Universe, a twelve-week rollout of events and experiences.
Against the backdrop of World Cup mania and centred on a disruptive “Rip the Script” campaign featuring a cast of characters as wide-ranging as Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé to Young Miko and Kim Kardashian, Schön sat down with Helena Thorton to learn more.
Helena Thorton/ Nike.
Can you walk me through the Nike Football Universe? What can fans of both football and Nike expect over these next twelve weeks?
The Nike Football Universe is twelve weeks of incredible product drops, athlete stories, retail activations and most importantly, street football soccer tournaments through our platform, Toma, that’s going to be happening in tens of cities all around the world.
Talk to me about the core pillars: community, culture, collaboration and innovation. How do each add to what you’ve created?
Nike Football itself stands for creativity, imagination, fearless football, but most importantly, joy. So, as we kind of built the World Cup plan, we wanted to make sure that those things were kind of true to everything we did, true to the collaborations that we wanted to host.
So, obviously, you’ve seen amazing products today with the likes of Palace and KFA, and you know, this jacket is a personal favourite of mine, but it’s also true for VAA and Team USA or Nocta in Canada. The list goes on. We wanted to make sure that each of those collaborations also spoke true to the premise of what Nike Football stands for, which is pushing things forward.
When it comes to community, we’re really focused on making sure more people than ever have not only have the chance to engage with Nike, but also to just play the best style of football.
So, Toma is a platform. Ten thousand young ballers have gone through it in twenty-five cities in the last year and in every single spot that we go to, we work with community partners, with local restaurants, bars, local designers to make sure that even though it’s all part of this one storey of Toma, it feels very, very local everywhere we go.
Nike.
Speaking to the Nike Football Universe, as an American brand, how is Nike uniquely positioned to tell this storey?
The World Cup this year is obviously happening in America, in Mexico and in Canada, but the birthplace of Nike Football actually started thirty years ago in Brazil, and since then, we’ve built a global football brand. The global sport of football just continues to keep growing. It looks very different everywhere around the world, and we’ve really built a whole universe for the next twelve weeks that speaks to the different nuances.
I think the thing that we’re most excited about is actually playing into the Americana style of the World Cup happening right here and that’s obviously what you can see through “Rip the Script”, we’ve anchored our main piece of content and one of our big storytelling pieces in Hollywood. We are playing into the movie tropes and kind of on this lot where everything kind of just unfolds because all the footballers want to do is play football the way that they want to play.
So, we’ve kind of really taken inspiration from the fact that the World Cup is in our backyard today, for Nike as a whole and then we’ve just had a lot of fun about how we’ve actually told storeys through that as a backdrop.
How does your cast embody the spirit of this universe?
We have many people that we’re working with throughout this whole universe. When it comes to the “Rip the Script” film and that world in particular, we have over thirty-one people in this piece of work. They are the greatest footballers in the world. If you think the likes of Vini Jr.,[Kylian] Mbappé, Cristiano Ronaldo, Erling Haaland, the list goes on. We’ve also got the legends that have built Nike football in the past. Eric Cantona, Zlatan Ibrahimović and obviously Didier Drogba and then we’ve also got a whole other cast of entertainers and singers and designers.
The truth is, every single person, regardless of your walk of life or what you do for a living, every single one of them is authentically connected to football and also the embodiment of trusting your gut and doing things differently and ripping the script.
I take Young Miko as an example. Young Miko actually used to play football for the Under-20 Puerto Rican National Team. Not many people know that about her, but she walks up on set and she’s just an unbelievable baller. That’s true of everybody in this world.
We really wanted to make sure that every cast member has their own storey of how they really trust their instincts and kind of don’t follow the playbook that’s already been set from them, whether that be on the football field or whether that be in other walks of life.
Nike.
Toma seems almost grassroots. Can you talk about Toma and your local/global strategy?
Toma really is grassroots. It’s built by the cities and the community partners that live on the streets where we all live every single day. If I think about even just most recently in some of the Toma activations, I had the chance to just go to the Toma that happened in Barcelona. It was happening during the weekend of El Clásico, and it was just the most unbelievable experience.
It’s this incredible three-on-three football tournament, which we’ve done deliberately to make sure that you have to play instinctive attacking football. When the ball hits your foot, you have to do something with it. You don’t have time for tactics or anything like that, but everything around it is very special.
We work with a local restaurant, which is actually one of the hotspots of youth football fandom in the city, and they came, and they had their food truck. We worked with local designers, local jewellery makers who are actually dressing some of the biggest people within culture, within the city, all kinds of having a take.
That’s true all around the world. In the U.S., kids of immigrants have designed the journeys for the players playing in the Toma platform. So, although it’s a very global proposition, because Nike has always actually celebrated street football, the Toma platform feels incredibly local because of how we tune it with local voices and local partners who are absolutely critical to Nike football and also just to the wider Nike family.
Nike.
What do you think the next generation brings to the game?
I’m so excited for the next generation in the world of football. I think we’re seeing it right now. There is a changing of the baton and we’re seeing these younger players with fresh, youthful styles, people who have much more kind of techy skills on the field. We’re seeing athletes quicker than ever before. We’re seeing athletes who just love the game to their absolute core and have kind of grown up watching some unbelievable players but are now kind of really transforming it into who they want to be themselves.
I think across the board, what we’re also seeing with these players is a much bigger crossover into other parts of the world, crossover into fashion. The footballers today are some of the most influential people in the world, not just in the world of football, but in the world of music. There’s more songs sung about footballers than ever before and then also obviously into fashion and the crossover there.
I think maybe even something I feel like we’re seeing more and more right now is even the crossover of football because of the players into other sports. If you think about the relationship between [Désiré] Doué and [Victor] Wemby as an example, all of a sudden, football is just kind of everywhere you look and in every kind of walk of life.
Nike.
The Mercurial Vapor 17 and the Mercurial Superfly 11 seem innovative in both agility and design. Is there typically a give and take to honour both?
Look, Mercurial is 28 years old. 28 years old. That is an old boot. The original Mercurial kind of was from 98’ and when Nike created the Mercurial for [Cristiano] Ronaldo, at the time, it was the creation of the speed silo. It was also the first time we’d ever put colour in football boots. So, when it was blue and yellow and silver, it kind of blew the industry by storm because until that point, the boots were black and they were white.
Fast forward 28 years. Mercurial is loved by everybody and players around the world and it stands for, notoriously being a quick boot. This year, we didn’t just launch the fastest boot out there, we also launched the other fastest boot out there because we have Superfly and Vapor.
I think it’s just proof points of Nike’s commitment to continue innovating in this space. Speed doesn’t always just have to be linear. It can also be about kind of quick cuts and quick turns, and I think the benefit of the two boots is if you just want to be the fastest player on the pitch, regardless of your playing style, the Mercurial is the boot for you.
Nike.
As evidenced by the diversity of Nike’s collaborations, why do you think football remains the world’s favourite pastime?
Obviously, I’m jealous, because I’m English and football is very much my favourite pastime, but football truly, truly is a global sport, and it is the global game. Again, it looks different in every market where you travel. In the U.S., it’s obviously historically been dominated by the women’s players and also by street football.
I think we go into this World Cup with the men’s team having huge momentum and support behind them, and it’s very, very exciting. I think, more than anything, the power of football, the power of these athletes, is a thing that just keeps on expanding, and I think that’s the thing I’m the most excited about.
Nike.
The House of Merc is located at 21 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10013. Open now through 19 July. Discover more here.
photography. courtesy of Nike
words. Malcolm Thomas
