For my first real project at Wieden + Kennedy I wanted to create advertising where the advert and the product were inseparable, to reveal the truth of the product benefit.
The challenge was to combat fashion shoe brands, our idea was although fashion shoes look good on the shelf, Nike shoes look and work better when you move.
The Air Zoom GPII for instance was designed for rotational flexibility but had unprecedented support to stop ankle roll. The 'Monkey Paw' pressed against the outer ankle to prevent roll. My thought was to show the shoe in motion, but this was 1998, and high definition slow motion video didn't exist yet.
I'd already photographed an exploding nike football with the photographic genius Nitin Vadukul – so I sketched a concept to make a movie camera out of three medium format Hasselblad still cameras taped together. We'd time the shutters to capture small chunks of sport movement and use a strobe to make it sharp.
Nitin Vadukul and I hired all the Hasselblads in NYC, and Richard Mulder the visionary Nike client bought us some time. We hired athletes to repeat the motion and we built up chunks of time to capture the full movement.
The amount of trust that went with this project was amazing, from Richard, Nitin, Jim and Tim, none of us knew this would work, but all of us believed we could make something new.
The piece I'm most proud of is the Air Zoom GPII, the distortion in the shoe is phenomenal. The rotational flexibility is visible in every shot. The advert for this product is it's design.
Team
Marc Shillum – Design & Art Direction
Tim Wolfe – Copy
Robert Nakata – Creative Direction
Nitin Vadukul – Photographer
Jim Bales — Engineering, Edgerton Institute
Client – Richard Mulder