12 months after acquiring Virgin Mega, Nike reveals a bit of the latest results of its trial with augmented reality and community-building.
Virgin Mega was a startup supported by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group that concentrated on fan shopping and communities. Ron Faris, who led the startup, said that Nike acquired Virgin Mega in order to experiment similar ideas.
Ever since, the team has became a “digital studio” called s23NYC. Faris said it still has a “startup culture,” with a small team of 24 startup veterans working out of the former Converse offices on 23rd Street in New York City.
The s23NYC has taken over Nike’s SNKRS app, which allows insider access to content about the latest sneakers. Faris said he regards SNKRS as “our digital piranha tank.”
This is like our lab, We drop something in the piranha tank and see how fast the piranhas swarm around it.
For instance, after Penny Hardaway took a sharpie to his sneakers in order for them to meet the NBA requirements, the SNKRS app introduced a stealthy promotion that enable users to unlock Royal Foamposite shoes by swiping over the screen to color in a digital photo — Nike describes it as “scratch-off cards for the digital age.”
SNKRS has also ran geo-specific Stash promotions, where users can buy exclusive and limited edition sneakers from the app — but only when they’re at a particular location in their city.
Also, the team did a promotion with Momofuku’s David Chang, in which users had to take a photo of Chang’s Fuku East Village menu in the SNKRS AR Camera, which would bring up a 3D model of the Nike SB Dunk High Pro Momofuku and make the sneakers available for purchase afterwards.
Faris stated that these campaigns are linked by a focus on scarcity and urgency, in combination with the idea of giving sneaker-heads the advantage to “peacock” their knowledge. In other words, the most in-the-know fans can snag their own sneakers, then get bragging rights by sharing that knowledge with others. For example, Faris said users were posting photos of the Fuku menu on Instagram, and they’d hang out at a Stash location to help others unlock the promotion.
Faris added that one of the objectives is to use technology to capture “only the good of lines, which is the tailgate, while avoiding the bad, which is where you feel like you’re at the DMV.” So even when users are directed to a certain geo-fenced area, there’s no actual line to pick up the physical shoes. That means it’s less of a cutthroat competition, and it doesn’t come with any tedious waiting.
Nike plans to launch SNKRS next in Japan and China later this year (the app is already available and functional in the United States and Europe). Faris also stated that his team is also focusing on an initiative known as Stash Squads. There, people who live outside a given city can still partake in a Stash promotion by forming teams with locals.
Have you given this a try or do you plan to do soon enough? Let me know in your comments.
Have you given this a try or do you plan to do soon enough? Let me know in your comments.
