Juggling the hopes and dreams of childhood with the many responsibilities of adulthood is a challenge even for the most accomplished among us, and it’s not always easy to create a life that is both stable and rooted in spiritual fulfillment. For kids, the pressure to make responsible choices in life can discourage the crucial act of imagining more expansive futures, which can potentially lead to lifelong feelings of resentment.
Keeping in mind the need to allow childhood dreams to flourish and expand throughout our lives, Nike has launched “Never Done Dreaming Big.” Created in partnership with Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai, the campaign celebrates Chinese New Year 2023 by inviting some of China’s most accomplished athletes to turn back the clock and reconnect with the dreams that spurred them to greatness.
The hero film features some of China’s best and brightest sports stars like Li Na, Yi Jianlian, Wang Shuang and Liu Xiang. The athletes are all de-aged and rendered as children. The young Li Na is told to sit at the kids’ table during dinner, but once there, she’s caught up in the excited talk of the dreams they each hope to achieve as sports stars. With each boast, the stakes seem to rise until she finally lets loose with her dreams of becoming a tennis pro, telling others not to aim to be as good as her but to be better than her.
Coinciding with this is the animated short “The Bunny Run,” starring Su Bingtian, China’s fastest sprinter.
This delightful clip shows the young Bingtian at the dinner table, delighting in playing with his chopsticks. When he sees a rabbit through the window of his family’s home, he is spurred to sprint after it, playing a joyful game of chase with the adorable bunny as fireworks go off overhead. The scene quickly changes to Bingtian standing on the field, ready to compete, driven onward by memories of the rabbit.
The hero film was created through a merge of deep fake tech, live-action video and computer generation, with each shot retouched frame by frame. The effect is a highly realistic short that combines a sense of imagination with realism as the campaign hopes to inspire the act of making dreams come true.
