Blast Radius: Nothing but Net
Chill Teaser Content
Ahead of the official launch, a Blast Radius teaser gives eager fans a glimpse of the XX2 story. “Our audience — especially the ones who visit the Jordan site before a new shoe is released — knows that something’s coming,” says Ericsson. “Our teaser is like the trailer that builds up the anticipation before a summer blockbuster movie.”
Edited in Final Cut Pro, the XX2 teaser shows a young player wearing a jersey loosely inspired by Michael Jordan’s high school team in Wilmington, North Carolina; the audio suggests his take-over mindset. “He’s not famous,” notes Ericsson. “He’s just an unknown kid. With Jordan out of the game now, we’re showing that the torch has been passed. There won’t be another MJ, so it’s within each player to uphold the values and respect he brought to the game.”
Video is a powerful tool to inspire young athletes. Says Ericsson, “Kudos to Final Cut Pro, which is the way forward for the creation of video.” By making the teaser available via podcast on iTunes, Blast Radius offers up a chunk of chill content for on-the-move fans. “The podcast is one of those distribution channels that makes a lot of sense, because of the widespread penetration of iPods, iTunes, and QuickTime,” adds Ericsson. “Kids can take it with them on their iPods and play it anywhere.”
Interactive Environment
For the actual XX2 launch on the Jordan website, Blast Radius developed a dynamic, interactive environment the creatives call “XX2 — Take Over,” which stars the same young player who appears in the teaser. “The customer watches the story of the take-over moment,” explains Ericsson. “Then he or she can navigate in this rich 3D landscape. It’s similar to the first person point of view in a video game, where you choose the environment you want to explore.”
Blast Radius built each interactive sequence from video that was edited in Final Cut Pro, then embedded it into Flash. Customers enter a virtual space with ambient sound that changes in content, tone, and volume as they trigger video segments that explore different features of the new shoe.
Unlocking Online Content
Through other campaign elements Blast Radius keeps customers connecting with the site and the brand. The team used Photoshop and Illustrator on their Macs to craft a print ad for Sole Collector, a sneaker-head industry magazine, that plays off images in the website video. The ad introduces the XX2 and drives awareness of an online product registration program.
“Each XX2 box contains a unique peel-off code,” explains Ericsson. “When customers go online to register their shoes, they unlock special content on the website.”
By offering freebies such as shoe images, website video, wallpapers, and clips of Michael Jordan’s recent tour to six European cities — all edited in Final Cut Pro, embedded in Flash, and available to customers in QuickTime or.m4v format — the sticker campaign is intended to reinforce the value of owning authentic Brand Jordan gear.
Blast Radius also created an SMS text message campaign for opt-in customers, who are invited to visit the Jordan site, enter a code, and receive promotional materials. Moreover, the agency pushes its XX2 online media to distribution channels such as YouTube and Google. “It’s important to be relevant in other places, in addition to our website, where consumers congregate and to provide content they can use in their own remixes,” notes Ericsson.
Finally, Blast Radius used DVD Studio Pro to create discs containing Jordan website video for retail outlets like Niketown, The Finish Line, and Foot Locker to use in point-of-purchase displays. Says Ericsson, “DVD Studio Pro is a very intuitive tool that helps us create seamless, high-quality DVDs almost effortlessly.”
A Familiar Standard
For Ericsson and his crew, Apple tools are a slam-dunk. “The pervasiveness of Apple as an accepted standard makes it very easy for our large team to work together and to work with third-party content providers,” he suggests. “Everyone is familiar with how this stuff is created and cut, and we all share common file formats.”
Marcus Ericsson prepares for the photoshoot with the athlete models
Plus, he adds, “The hardware is extremely fast, so it enables us to be very productive. Apple tools allow us to create content for lots of different formats and venues, so we can get really creative. We take the web stuff we’ve created and push it out as a video or a podcast or into the event space or retail or mobile — and it’s just as easy to cross over to these channels as it is to create the original material.”
