Nike By You

Narrative Direction

Two unsuspecting soccer crews got the surprise of a lifetime when they found out World Cup athletes nominated them to design their own cleats. And not just any cleats – the Phantom Luna, Nike’s first soccer boot designed by women, for all.

The crew’s stories launched at the height of the Women’s World Cup, part of Nike’s push to build engagement around women’s football worldwide.

The in-house creative team at Nike worked magic behind the scenes from start to finish – tackling every detail from the unboxing experience to social videos capturing the reveal. As narrative director, I led our lovely writing crew on everything from strategic direction to .com headlines to Tiktok captions.

The athletes

These elite players contributed their expert insights to develop the Phantom Luna, and wore it on the pitch during their World Cup matches. When it came time to launch the Luna, we turned to them to decide which young players would be the first to customize it through the Nike By You platform.

  • Defender for the US Women’s National Team

  • Midfielder for the France Women’s National Team

The crews

Crystal and Grace hand-picked the grassroots crews closest to their hearts to be the first to customize the Luna. These two youth teams are awesome examples of the power of football to change lives.


  • PCFC provides high-quality, affordable club soccer to low-income, immigrant, and refugee youth. They are a safe and inclusive space for LGBTQ+ players.

    📍 Portland, Oregon


  • FDF is an international foundation enabling soccer coaches to become catalysts for girls' equal rights and opportunities, so all girls can shape their own future.

    📍 Paris, France

Setting the stage

We set a storytelling foundation for the project with upfront narrative direction that brought the athlete, crew, and product stories together. We then wrote scripts for our athletes to surprise the crews with their nomination, and gathered crew insights to inform our on-set interview shoot plan.

Creating the unboxing experience

  • Our awesome writing crew made sure the wayfinding copy inside the box was clear and fun, with little surprises throughout. Shoutout to our friends at Instrument for leading the design of the box itself.

  • We broke down the customizable components of the Luna – from color palettes and patterns to personalized tags – in a zine. It even featured a bespoke madlib by our in-house poet Zach Schomburg.

  • Since our teams were based in the US and France, with many of our States-based crew members speaking Spanish as their first language, we worked with Nike’s internal localization team to ensure the zines were available in all three languages.

Capturing the magic

We delivered a full suite of digital assets across Nike’s owned and social channels. Below is a quick snapshot.


  • Nike.com landing pages
    Nike app threads
    App notifications & cards


  • Instagram reels x2
    Instagram carousels x2
    Tiktoks x2

Client
Nike

Role
Narrative Director

Dream Team
Zach Schomburg
Megan Flynn
Allison Olson
Samantha Del Rosario
Alex Sulitzer
Aimee Lynn Barneburg'
Aleah Jordan
Annie Jones
Mark Aver

Deliverables
Narrative strategy
Athlete + crew insights
Athlete scripts
On-set interviews
Unboxing experience
Social videos x4
IG carousels x2