#210: Nike's Airphoria partnership with Fortnite

🏃‍♂️Skip crawling and walking, we're running

Another week, another piece on Nike and their digital collectible efforts. I thought there would be a break in between all the announcements that the team made, but it’s full speed ahead.

Nike revealed Airphoria this morning, an activation in partnership with Fortnite. Check out the trailer, it’s pretty cool.

Some folks would call this brand activation, but I would argue that it’s much more than that. It’s a brand, engagement, and platform activation.

Web3 fans had an inkling that there would be a tie-in to .SWOOSH somewhere, but it wasn’t obvious how. Sleuths like myself started digging around, and we found more details in an Epic Games help article. C’mon, why hide the details? 😂

• Players that link their Epic Games and Nike account will be eligible to claim an Account Linking Achievement

• Players that link their accounts and purchase the Fortnite Airphoria Pack will be eligible to claim an Airphoria Achievement

• Players that explore Airphoria island for at least 10 minutes will earn the Air Max 1 ‘86 Back Bling in-game item

The Account Linking Achievement is notable because this ‘solebound’ collectible will provide first access to the .SWOOSH Air Max Virtual Collection in the future.

We’ve already seen what this looked like with the Our Force 1 poster, which provided holders first access to the Our Force 1 drop last month. As the .SWOOSH community grows, first access will likely become more valuable.

What else was notable about this announcement?

We’re seeing rewards based on different engagement requirements

These 3 rewards are not mutually exclusive and provide an example of what is possible when it comes to interoperability:

By connecting the Nike and Epic Games accounts, both partners can gain unique insights into this consumer segment:

• How many .SWOOSH members already have an Epic Games account?

• Is there a spike in .SWOOSH waitlist signups from the Airphoria activation?

• How many players collect one of the rewards? Collect all of the rewards?

• For the players that purchase an Airphoria Pack, is this their first Epic Games purchase?

• How many players explore Airphoria for 10 minutes? What percentage of players spend time on the island for significantly more than 10 minutes? What parts of the island are the players spending the most time?

• How many of these .SWOOSH members have purchased the Our Force 1’s? How many didn’t purchase Our Force 1’s but purchased an Airphoria Pack, possibly due to FOMO?

The .SWOOSH Twitter account is stingy

@dotSWOOSH only follows 4 other Twitter accounts, talk about picky! Which accounts are they?

This list will grow as more announcements and partnerships are made. Don’t expect them to follow you back though…

The .SWOOSH cross-promotion continues

While all the Nike x Fortnite commotion was happening, I got a push notification at 11AM PST.

Tapping on the notification took me to the following event:

Nike is continuing to proactively (Twitter, Instagram, SNKRS app) and prudently (selectively resharing via main Nike brand) expand the .SWOOSH footprint to their audience.

I would think about this with the awareness, consideration, conversion funnel.

Some of us (aka: me) are way at the bottom of the funnel buying virtual sneakers left and right since I can’t afford real ones. However, the mainstream audience is only starting to hear about what Nike is doing, if at all.

As .SWOOSH continues to grow in awareness and consideration, we’ll see more cross-promotion across all Nike properties. The last frontier will likely be in physical retail locations. Then things get interesting 😉

Nike’s evolution into a platform

When I covered the Nike x EA partnership announcement earlier this month, I made the argument that Nike was evolving from a brand to a platform with .SWOOSH.

Instead of the Nike brand solely showing up on other platforms like Fortnite, we’re seeing other brands show up on Nike’s emerging virtual platform. We can see this turning into a two-way street.

On the surface, we see this:

But if we dig a little deeper, we can also see this happening:

This becomes more apparent, especially with the Account Linking Achievement which is co-branded.

Seeing this makes me fairly certain that there will be similar achievements with Nike’s EA SPORTS partnership and future activations.

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As I continue to be (slightly) bothered by how much I’ve covered Nike (and RTFKT’s) web3 efforts, I think it’s fair to say that Nike may be the first major consumer brand that is making serious headway with solving the web3 Rubik’s Cube for mainstream adoption.

From filing patents for digital collectibles using blockchain tech back in 2018 to announcing partnerships that are making the average consumer raise their eyebrows, they are building the plane while flying it. And so far, the flight feels pretty smooth.

LMK if you get the joke 😉

See you Thursday!