Creative Director’s Choice: Inii Kim of King & Partners on Nike Korea’s empowering rap video
Creative Director’s Choice gives creative directors a chance to highlight the current work they think is the best out in the ad world – the ads and campaigns they believe are making a difference.
Run It by Nike is the Creative Director's Choice this week
This week, Inii Kim, co-founder and creative director at King & Partners, talks about why ‘Run It’ by Nike Korea and rapper Jay Park has both universal and local Korean appeal, and is wildly creative to boot. The video, created by Wieden+Kennedy in Tokyo, looked to instill a ‘Just Do It’ attitude in Korean Senegis (high school graduates), and was written with the aim of inspiring confidence and originality and broke just before the Winter Olympics.
‘Run It’ by Nike Korea is more than just a sleek campaign by Nike. It hits you with powerful sound and visuals that draw you in instantly, makes you go "Wow, that was cool." Afterwards, you might not be able to appreciate all of the layers that make this such a remarkable piece of work, unless you are familiar with Korean culture.
Korea is quite a complicated country where individuality is not embraced. Historically isolated from other countries for longer than its neighbors Japan and China, and physically isolated in a peninsula blocked by North Korea, Korea has very strong culture and language of its own but definitely lacks diversity or alternative points of view.
When a single point of view dominates an entire country, everyone is encouraged to look up to the same ideal of the smart, good looking rich person and emulate it. Media fuels that desire by constantly shaping a new image of this ideal person/life season by season, and people happily spend money to look like or live like it.
‘Run It’ throws a strong message about embracing individuality and trusting your own vision in the coolest way possible. Authentic but not exaggerated settings that are so Korean, fresh casting not relying on big name celebrities, such an effective choice of localized tagline (‘미친존재감’ which roughly translates to ‘crazy presence’) – to accompany their primary line ‘Just Do It’ from idea to execution, it's a very powerful and meaningful campaign that Korea needs right now.
Inii Kim is co-founder and creative director at New York independent agency King & Partners.
To view the video, click on the Creative Works box below.
To see the latest creative ads and campaigns, visit The Drum’s Creative Works section. If you or your creative director would like to feature in our Creative Director’s Choice, please contact Kyle O’Brien at kyle.obrien@thedrum.com.
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