Nike × Ultra Football
Digital personalisation comes to retail with Nike and Ultra Football.
Pushing the boundaries of retail innovation.
Over the years, Nike has cemented its position as one of the most innovative retail brands, constantly pushing boundaries and embracing the latest technologies.
Their focus on understanding and meeting the ever-evolving needs of consumers has enabled them to consistently introduce game-changing products and experiences. From their revolutionary Flyknit tech that transformed the world of athletic footwear, to their seamless integration of digital platforms, Nike continuously redefines what it means to be a modern retail brand.
Having seen the immersive digital experiences at ACMI I worked on, the Partnership Transformation Team at Nike approached my team to evolve the customer journey for one of their partners, Ultra Football.
Nike approached my team to design and build an innovative, holistic online to offline (O2O) customer experience with Ultra Football.
After some initial collaboration with Nike, we did a deep dive into the ecosystems of Ultra Football, uncovering the challenges they faced across their core focus areas.
The team at Ultra Football aimed to increase in-store traffic and online memberships by providing more value to their customers. When it came to potential solutions, our brief was wide open, giving us a huge opportunity to understand the Ultra Football customer and their needs, and to create an immersive and personalised retail experience.
Our process was human centred design – at its best.
Embracing the power of data analytics helped us uncover key consumer insights, allowing us to identify customer preferences and behaviours. This enabled Ultra Football to confidently consider personalised recommendations and targeted marketing campaigns across a number of channels.
We recruited and undertook an extensive user research piece with participants who represented our four key audiences:
Players
Fanatics
Parents
Club admins
We synthesised findings, identified patterns and themes, and extracted key insights to grow our understanding of each persona, giving us further confidence in our chosen solutions.
Having revealed problem areas and aspirations for both consumers and the business, we moved into prototyping solutions.
Together with Nike and Ultra, we workshopped concepts and developed briefs for a number of projects, including what ultimately became the Boot Finder experience.
The outcome
By pairing digital innovation with user-centred design, we created a seamless and engaging shopping experience for customers, ensuring they feel connected to Ultra Football and Nike both online and offline.
The outcome reflects Nike's commitment to pushing the boundaries of retail, and our strategic methodology.
The in-store interactive kiosk builds on customers' interactions with Ultra staff by offering deeper product insights and recommendations.
Completing the Boot Finder quiz on the in-store kiosk triggers an immersive recommendation, animated on the Boot Wall.
“A big thumbs up to the Liquorice team for all their incredible work elevating the consumer experience for the Nike brand and on behalf of our retail partners.
One of their greatest strengths is their ability to develop strong human connections, helping them to understand their stakeholders needs. Leaning into this approach has allowed them to deliver on everything from impactful, productive workshops to developing a robust strategic direction, always informed by data and insights.
This has all culminated with some first class products being developed and released into market that have resonated with the target consumer and already driving strong results. We couldn’t be happier with Liquorice’s work - always fun to work with and a team that truly delivers.”
— Luke Harry, Partnership Transformation Director, Nike
Project team
Jayne Halsey: CX, UX, and UI Direction
Shane Loorham: Creative Direction
Matthew Storey: Technical Direction
Emerald Cowell: Digital Strategy
Molly Edwards: Project Management
Steve Mitchell: Design
Madeleine Baud: Copywriting
Dirty Puppet: Animation