Nike’s campaign for its NikeSync app, created with R/GA London, won the Grand Prix in Entertainment Lions for Sports. The campaign takes a bold stance against the male-dominated fitness world by championing free conversation around menstruation via its cycle-tracking app.

The product and its campaign highlight the workout needs of women during their menstrual cycle and, in collaboration with Dr. Stacy Sims, an expert on female athlete physiology, the app tailors a series of training programs to each phase of one’s period. It also features a series of “NAQs: Never Asked Questions” to further access to accurate information on topics such as whether or not menstruating affects a woman’s ability to swim, practice yoga or if there’s a danger of over-exercising.

Why it won

Jury president Marcel Marcondes, global CMO for Anheuser-Busch InBev, shared that the judges sought to find a campaign representative of not just how creative entertainment can leverage the cultural power of sports, but also work that spotlighted everyday people rather than going the typical celebrity or professional athlete route.

The jury wanted to award the Grand Prix to a campaign “demonstrating how brands can leverage sports to actually celebrate the human differences and the nuances that make everyone special—all of that with brand authenticity, true commercial impact and with a program that is designed for the long run, not just a stunt,” he said.

Nike's marketing featuring women has not always won accolades. In 2019, Olympian Allyson Felix penned an open letter to Nike in the New York Times speaking out about the sportswear giant's treatment of her during her pregnancy. And in 2021, a Nike video series about Black pregnancy prompted a backlash.

Looking forward

Marcondes says the sports advertising category has seized the moment to leverage “the power it has, the influence it has to also step up and address some very important social and environmental causes.”

However, he warned future juries for the category that although the category’s turnout of activism is inspiring, not to make that a criteria for the award. Placing the necessity on the category might push more brands to ride the wave of a social issue or drum up more trouble around another, which will inevitably betray its authentic voice.

“Some brands, they create some fake issue just because they think, ‘If I don’t say it, if I don’t try to connect my case to something like this, it’s not going to have enough relevance,’” warned Marcondes.