Blast Radius: Nothing But Net
By Bija Gutoff
By Bija Gutoff
The NBA All-Star game is strut-your-stuff time, both on court and off. So at the 2007 extravaganza in Las Vegas the Jordan brand unveiled the Air Jordan XX2, its latest exercise in putting wings to human feet, with apposite panache. Online, the launch was just as splashy. A cross-media campaign created by the Vancouver-based firm Blast Radius — designed and executed with the help of Apple hardware and software — gave the new shoe a powerful digital assist.
Marcus Ericsson, creative director of Blast Radius, led the cross-media campaign for the launch of Air Jordan XX2.While lead Nike agency Wieden + Kennedy is responsible for overall branding, messaging, and creative concepts, Blast Radius specializes in website design and creation (it’s responsible for managing jumpman23.com, the official Brand Jordan website) and digital extensions such as podcasting and SMS messaging — just the ticket to reach the shoe’s target youth market.
Blast Radius works closely with Nike’s Brand Jordan team. “More than your typical client-agency relationship, it’s really a partnership,” notes Blast Radius creative director Marcus Ericsson. “Tight collaboration is essential to delivering a cohesive online user experience as we take the shoe into the mobile space.”
Goin’ Mobile
Today, scoring with a young audience means going mobile. “It’s more and more critical,” emphasizes Ericsson. His company reaches out via such techniques as a shortcode (text message XX2 to 23623) consumers can text to receive a schedule of All-Star week events on their cell phones. Fans can also download icons, ring tones, shoe imagery, and music from the Jordan site.
To ensure an impressive debut for the XX2 in Las Vegas, Blast Radius designed a booth with enormous, eye-catching projection displays. A VJ used Final Cut Pro, QuickTime Pro, and Keynote on a MacBook Pro on the show floor to remix website content, footage of attendees shot by an onsite video crew, and slideshows of people visiting the Air Jordan photo booth to check out Brand Jordan’s new “How I Rock My J’s” campaign.
Explains Ericsson, “People come to these events in their best pair of Jordans, which they don’t normally wear outside, so it’s a chance to show off their best kicks. The idea of the campaign is to show how they hook their shoes with fashion.” Each visitor got a glossy print of his or her own All-Star threads.
“Take Over” Campaign
The new Air Jordan XX2 sports a distinctly high-tech look. Its designers took their cues from the F22 fighter jet to craft the shoe’s futuristic, gray camouflage style. “It plays on the notion of stealth on the basketball court and the player’s ability to take over the game at all points, whether on offense or defense,” says Ericsson.
The broadcast and print campaigns for the XX2 focus on how athletes maintain dominance. “It’s physical preparation and mental readiness, combined with the utility of the product, that let the ballplayer change the game on the court,” says Ericsson.
The “take over” theme also carries through to the digital domain, where Blast Radius offers consumers an interactive experience. “Unlike broadcast and print, the digital brand is personal and immersive,” notes Ericsson. “We journey deeper into the mind of the athlete to understand what ingredients enable him to take over.”
Ericsson and his teammates used Final Cut Pro to edit sequences of richly layered video that explore five distinct elements of the take-over: prepare, defend, engage, evade, and strike. The essence of each verb is animated through video that highlights specific shoe features.
Chill Teaser Content
Ahead of the official launch, a Blast Radius teaser gives eager fans a glimpse of the XX2 story. “Our audience — especially the ones who visit the Jordan site before a new shoe is released — knows that something’s coming,” says Ericsson. “Our teaser is like the trailer that builds up the anticipation before a summer blockbuster movie.”
Ahead of the official launch, a Blast Radius teaser gives eager fans a glimpse of the XX2 story. “Our audience — especially the ones who visit the Jordan site before a new shoe is released — knows that something’s coming,” says Ericsson. “Our teaser is like the trailer that builds up the anticipation before a summer blockbuster movie.”
Edited in Final Cut Pro, the XX2 teaser shows a young player wearing a jersey loosely inspired by Michael Jordan’s high school team in Wilmington, North Carolina; the audio suggests his take-over mindset. “He’s not famous,” notes Ericsson. “He’s just an unknown kid. With Jordan out of the game now, we’re showing that the torch has been passed. There won’t be another MJ, so it’s within each player to uphold the values and respect he brought to the game.”
Video is a powerful tool to inspire young athletes. Says Ericsson, “Kudos to Final Cut Pro, which is the way forward for the creation of video.” By making the teaser available via podcast on iTunes, Blast Radius offers up a chunk of chill content for on-the-move fans. “The podcast is one of those distribution channels that makes a lot of sense, because of the widespread penetration of iPods, iTunes, and QuickTime,” adds Ericsson. “Kids can take it with them on their iPods and play it anywhere.”
Interactive Environment
For the actual XX2 launch on the Jordan website, Blast Radius developed a dynamic, interactive environment the creatives call “XX2 — Take Over,” which stars the same young player who appears in the teaser. “The customer watches the story of the take-over moment,” explains Ericsson. “Then he or she can navigate in this rich 3D landscape. It’s similar to the first person point of view in a video game, where you choose the environment you want to explore.”
Blast Radius built each interactive sequence from video that was edited in Final Cut Pro, then embedded it into Flash. Customers enter a virtual space with ambient sound that changes in content, tone, and volume as they trigger video segments that explore different features of the new shoe.
Unlocking Online Content
Through other campaign elements Blast Radius keeps customers connecting with the site and the brand. The team used Photoshop and Illustrator on their Macs to craft a print ad for Sole Collector, a sneaker-head industry magazine, that plays off images in the website video. The ad introduces the XX2 and drives awareness of an online product registration program.
“Each XX2 box contains a unique peel-off code,” explains Ericsson. “When customers go online to register their shoes, they unlock special content on the website.” By offering freebies such as shoe images, website video, wallpapers, and clips of Michael Jordan’s recent tour to six European cities — all edited in Final Cut Pro, embedded in Flash, and available to customers in QuickTime or.m4v format — the sticker campaign is intended to reinforce the value of owning authentic Brand Jordan gear.
Blast Radius also created an SMS text message campaign for opt-in customers, who are invited to visit the Jordan site, enter a code, and receive promotional materials. Moreover, the agency pushes its XX2 online media to distribution channels such as YouTube and Google. “It’s important to be relevant in other places, in addition to our website, where consumers congregate and to provide content they can use in their own remixes,” notes Ericsson.
Finally, Blast Radius used DVD Studio Pro to create discs containing Jordan website video for retail outlets like Niketown, The Finish Line, and Foot Locker to use in point-of-purchase displays. Says Ericsson, “DVD Studio Pro is a very intuitive tool that helps us create seamless, high-quality DVDs almost effortlessly.”
A Familiar Standard
For Ericsson and his crew, Apple tools are a slam-dunk. “The pervasiveness of Apple as an accepted standard makes it very easy for our large team to work together and to work with third-party content providers,” he suggests. “Everyone is familiar with how this stuff is created and cut, and we all share common file formats.”
Plus, he adds, “The hardware is extremely fast, so it enables us to be very productive. Apple tools allow us to create content for lots of different formats and venues, so we can get really creative. We take the web stuff we’ve created and push it out as a video or a podcast or into the event space or retail or mobile — and it’s just as easy to cross over to these channels as it is to create the original material.”
Home Court Advantage
Electronic Arts just released HomeCourt, the fourth in its NBA Street video game series and its debut offering for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, in which gamers can visit the home courts of stars like Rip Hamilton, Mike Bibby, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, and Ray Allen.
Stunning audio, created on Macs, gives the new game a true home court advantage. “Our audio provides a combination of modeled realism, complete fantasy and new-style arcade sounds to amp up the gameplay experience,” explains EA senior audio artist Gordon Durity.
Adds EA senior audio director Charles Deenen, “We recorded, edited and mastered the audio on our G5s and MacBook Pros, and we used Soundtrack for de-noising — it often beats the much more expensive programs.” To these audio experts, the Mac just sounds right. “Apple’s tools, and the GUI standards they’ve set for programs like ProTools, are simply the best,” says Deenen. “I couldn’t imagine using audio tools on anything but a Mac. It just makes sense when you’re doing right-brain creative work.”
And it wasn’t just the audio. “Our main development tools for content and game data creation all reside on our Power Mac G5s,” continues Durity. “I used iMovie to create game capture video files. This is usually a large task for game developers, who are primarily PC-based due to special video cards, compatible software, and breakouts. Being able to do it with iMovie and one cable saved me lots of time and effort. I also used iChat extensively for videocons with external contractors.”
Notes Durity, “Apple’s systems just work, period. During the five-month period I worked on HomeCourt, I rebooted my Mac once. The third-party audio tools and custom development tools we employ are smooth and easy to work with. And I’m not fighting the OS to get things done reliably and predictably.”
