In 2012 Nike created a campaign titled ‘Find your greatness’ which consists of a series of short commercials showing regular people (not athletes or traditionally fit looking people) achieving things that to some would not be considered great but because it’s that characters own personal journey, it’s great to them; ‘Find Your Greatness’. Each commercial consists of a voiceover commenting unexpected inspirational advice, for example; ‘Greatness needs a lot of things, But it doesn’t need an audience’. It gives the everyman the inspiration to work on what they think is greatness and not to compare to other people. I like this campaign because the commercials are simplistic in that they focus on a single character doing a fairly simplistic action and use only ambient/ diegetic sound effects accompanied by a voiceover.
Within these commercials, and amongst some other research, I began to pick up on the traditional structure for Nike’s commercials;
- A slogan in their typeface with a full stop at the end.
- The logo on its own as the last shot overlaid onto a slow moving clip – Futura ultra condensed bold.
These are elements I will need to include in my commercial in order to make it look realistic and professional.
Some good research material here, Isabelle. Like the way you have isolated tow key factors in making the commercial look and sound professional. As simple as it sounds, the phrase “find your greatness” was a masterstroke and probably cost more than the entire shooting budget. The power of the word(s) make(s) a big impact in advertising. Be interesting to see how you might discover new meaning through words and the sounds that follow. Be good to see some of your rough cuts when we next have a tutorial. Best, Steve.