DESCRIPTION

Description of the work and the creative idea behind it.

‘King of The Streets’, was a fully-integrated global campaign, staring over 30 youth culture icons. Reaching youth in digital and real life, the campaign was designed to return their energy to their local high streets post lockdown. Built around a 120’ TVC, showing a high street elevated by JD, King of Trainers, the campaign extended to put the street at the centre of digital culture. We brought the street to life through a mockumentary, an 8bit mobile game, a fully shoppable digital version, a streamable theme tune, live events, OOH, social, earned and TikTok challenge and partnership.

THE BRIEF

Detail of the challenge and objectives and the target audience

Christmas is JD Sports’ biggest retail moment, but the high street had been badly affected by Lockdowns. We were tasked with creating a campaign that would reach the core audience of urban youth in digital and ensure that they were back on the streets and back in store in time for Christmas.

THE SOLUTION

The creative solution, the reasoning behind it, and how it solved the challenge in the brief.

JD Sports knows that real culture comes from the streets and is made by the youth. But in 2021 the high streets of the world looked more like a retail wasteland than a cultural playground. Urban youth were living in digital, and we needed to reconnect them with their vital role in the real-life culture of their local high streets. 

We created JD Street - an everyday high street elevated by JD: King of Trainers - and put it at the centre of digital youth culture. 

We kicked off with an epic two-minute TV spot, telling the story of an everyday youth, discovering a who's who of street and sports culture royalty (including KSI, Little Simz, Central Cee, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Kalvin Phillips and Jadon Sancho) on his journey to grab a last-minute Christmas turkey for his mum. We kept it feeling real, working with our talent to co-script the dialogue and action.

We enlisted king and queen of street bangers, Toddla T and Shaybo to make a soundtrack and released it through Spotify, and other streaming platforms. We used it to create a TikTok challenge, moving youth back to the streets to share their talents. And for youth who still couldn’t get back to the streets we made the ad shoppable in digital. For the more digitally talented, we created an 8-bit mobile game allowing people to play the ad. Players won prizes for keeping their creps fresh and even got to spud Anthony Joshua! We created King of Trims, a mockumentary, exploring life in JD Street's dog grooming salon, with comedy heroes, Michael Dapaah and Tobi Brown as the hapless stylists to some worried looking dogs and business partners to a despairing Maya Jama. 

The film was launched through TikTok and notched up over 10m views in the first two days. We met our returning street audience in real life with a mega OOH campaign heroing local talent in their hometowns and went BIG taking over the UK’s most iconic spots including the piccadilly lights, Routemaster bus wraps and the 1km Stratford Bridge site.

PLACEMENT

Where the work ran

The work ran across twenty territories including Australia, South Korea, Thailand and Europe. The Campaign could be seen on TV, in-store and on iconic digital OOH spots such as        Piccadilly Circus in London.

TIMELINE

How long the work ran for

7 weeks - from 6th Nov-24th Dec 2021

RESULTS

How the work impacted on the success of the brand or growth of the business.

•       20m+ views of the TVC on YouTube

•      More than 25m views of the mockumentary on social

•     Mobile game played by 100,000 people for a combined total of over 10,000 hours

•     Named as 'YouTube's most engaging Christmas ad of the year”

•     JD Sports reported a strong Christmas trading period