Dan Tappan, writer.

KD15 campaign

The KD15 marked a new milestone for 12-time NBA All Star, Kevin Durant. But instead of creating another “this athlete is really great at their sport” campaign, we wanted to tell the story of KD’s meteoric rise to the man he is today—both on and off-court.

Evolution of Game

KD has fundamentally changed the game of basketball, but he’s also changed his own game over the years. Everyone knows KD is a world-renown NBA player, but it turns out he’s put just as much effort into entrepreneurship and philanthropy over the past few years. 

The creative strategy and messaging hierarchy was all about change as a means of growth. We found that KD’s interest in crypto could be leveraged in our visual center to show change in the form of glitching 16-bit patterned blocks.

The Campaign

Colorways acted as their own narratives, with a unique pattern and story that supported one of KD’s passions, from gaming to music. I wrote all the copy for email, app threads, PDP, social, push notifications, and eventually banner ads for NBA.com, which totaled around 50+ comms. Our work was featured both on the Nike homepage, as well as the homepage for Nike Basketball. 

One bucket list item I got to cross off was deploying seeding kits. Influencers received a limited edition shoe box with a see-through acrylic design and decorated with a manifesto written by yours truly. Plus, the shoebox included a QR code that led to a microsite that told the story of each shoe.