Nike Run

Running campaigns default to the same picture. An athlete mid stride, frozen, lit like a car, with every sign of effort retouched away. The brief was to make something that felt true to the sport without abandoning the craft, and to build a campaign around one image rather than a library of them. We shot one portrait at dusk against a flat blue sky, and left the sweat and the freckles in. She reads as someone at the end of a run rather than a model between takes, which was the whole point. The motion work holds that frame and moves the type instead, so the campaign has energy without the subject having to perform it. One frame, used properly, did more than ten variations would have. It is the cheapest kind of campaign to extend and the hardest kind to imitate.