Nike gameifies marketing with Reactland experience

By

Robin Driver

Published
Mar 15, 2018

American sportswear company Nike, Inc. has collaborated with advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy Shanghai to create Reactland, a side-scrolling video game designed to promote the brand’s Epic React shoe in China, allowing players to test-run the new model on a treadmill. 

To play the game, customers must head to one of the activations taking place in select Nike stores in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu. Players don a pair of Nike’s Epic React sneakers and create a personalized avatar that they control by running on a treadmill set up in front of a large screen, using a handheld trigger to jump over obstacles or onto strategically placed springboards.
 
The high-energy game aims to highlight the unique properties of the new sneaker model, which is being marketed as bouncy, light and durable.

The retro-style 2D platformer features a variety of backdrops that see players running across Parisian rooftops, jumping over bullet trains in Japan, jogging in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza or sprinting through a bamboo forest complete with dancing pandas, among other global locations rendered in a colourful 8-bit art style.
 
The experience is being publicized through a short video available to view on Youtube, and participants in the activations also receive a 10-second video of their gameplay that they can share online, a social media-savvy touch that should garner the playful publicity stunt maximum exposure.
 
The game and associated activations tap into current experiential retail and marketing trends which have seen everyone from malls to rival sportswear brand Under Armour setting up VR experiences to catch consumers’ attention.
 
Reactland can also be seen as a continuation of Nike’s wider innovations attempting to leverage technology in order to gameify usually solitary sports pursuits through apps such as Nike+ Run Club and Nike Training Club, a strategy which has also been adopted by Under Armour with its UA Record app.
 
As of yet, no plans have been revealed to extend the Reactland experience outside of China.