Rethinking the Finish Line

A repositioning project focused on helping Nike Running connect with Gen Z through inclusive, culturally relevant storytelling.

Year

2025

Company

Nike Running

The Challenge

Nike Running had a visibility problem with Gen Z. While the Nike brand remained iconic, its running category wasn’t connecting with younger audiences—especially those who didn’t see themselves as “traditional runners.”

The existing positioning skewed competitive and elite, while Gen Z runners were gravitating toward movement rooted in joy, community, and mental wellness. In an era where running looks more like group jogs, Strava memes, and “hot girl walks” than marathon training plans, the brand needed to reimagine its role.

The creative challenge: reposition Nike Running in a way that felt emotionally resonant and culturally fluent—without alienating the performance-driven legacy at its core.

The Strategy

I led the strategy and development of the repositioning campaign, grounding it in Gen Z values, behavioral insights, and cultural fluency.

I began by analyzing audience data, movement trends, and the shifting narratives around wellness and identity—surfacing key themes like emotional health, inclusive pacing, and personal storytelling. From there, I developed a campaign direction that reframed running around self-expression, not self-discipline.

The messaging architecture moved away from performance benchmarks and leaned into ideas of mental clarity, movement as therapy, and everyday momentum. Tone and visuals were informed by lo-fi aesthetics, meme culture, and the language of grassroots running communities—designed to feel authentic, not corporate.

The result was a fully reimagined narrative system and campaign blueprint that widened the aperture of what it means to run—and who gets to be a runner.

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The Outcome

The repositioning strategy gave Nike Running a new foundation to reach Gen Z with relevance and credibility. It helped internal teams shift campaign planning from elite messaging to inclusive momentum—providing a clear direction for creative, partnerships, and storytelling that resonated with younger, more diverse audiences.

The new narrative has already influenced early content pilots, collab proposals, and influencer programming—pushing the category into spaces where Gen Z already lives and moves.

Rather than competing with Gen Z’s definition of running, the brand is now positioned to meet it—on sidewalks, in group chats, and across cultural touchpoints where identity and movement intersect.

The finish line didn’t move—the story around it did.

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