Sightings: Nike’s Camp Victory At 2012 Track Trials
July 10, 2012 by Dave Haynes
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Nike did something akin to a pop-up store – but more like an experience center – during the recent US Olympics team tracki and field trials in a soggy Eugene, OR.
Called Camp Victory, it was open during the 10 days of the trials, giving track-lovers and Nike devotees a technology-driven brand experience that was predictably impressive.
As Oregon Live (Oregonian newspaper) reports:
Three trapezoidal structures, each about 1,400 square feet, dominated the west side of Hayward Field during the U.S. Track and Field Trials… A fourth structure, with a more straight-forward purpose, sells Nike shoes, apparel and other gear.
The pavilions – “Shoe Lab,” “Speed Tunnel,” “Nike+ Running” — were the creation of Skylab Architecture. The Portland firm began collaborating with contacts at Nike on the design late last year, said Sebastian Guivernau, the Skylab architect who led the collaboration.
Other collaborators included HUSH Studios of New York City, which handled digital media within the display; and Big Giant of Portland, which was responsible for graphics.
Nike want Skylab to create something that would reflect the “posture and tectonics of speed,” Guivernau said.
“We looked to kinetic structures, the posture of sprinters coming out of the starting blocks, and Nike’s hyper-light approach to running products for inspiration,” he said.
The result: angular structures wrapped in a transluscent membrane housing products as well as technological gizmos and glittering displays. All of it is surrounding by intersecting lanes of race tracks.
The layout is designed “to be interactive from the moment visitors cross the gateway to when they find themselves fully immersed in digital medias experiences,” Guivernau said.
Camp Victory is a name that obviously pays homage to Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. His black and white photo is positioned strategically throughout.
Very nice. Like the FuelBand pop-up store in London, this reflects a brand really pushing digital and in-store experience far beyond the idea of “where do we put the screens?” As noted in the past, most of the best creative work in the area loosely defined as digital signage is being done by brands and small agencies who never use the term digital signage.
Big budgets obviously help. But there’s more going on here than just throwing money at something.
As you would expect with Nike, everything about this experience was impressive. They spent a ridiculous amount of money on it. But I understand that they netted a ridiculous amount of money…times two…in the t-shirt/hoody/running shoe shop that was part of the pop up. By the way, now that the trials are over, it has stopped raining here in Oregon.
It occurred to me as I was watching the trials on TV that while it was too bad it was raining a lot of the time, there’s a strong chance those are the conditions the athletes will be dealing with in London.