Experience

Sanja, Founder & CEO

During the 2014 NBA Playoffs Craig Sager was diagnosed with Leukemia. His doctor cleared him to come back to work for the Oklahoma City vs. Chicago game on May 5th, 2015. Due to his close relationship with Nike, we felt it was important to celebrate his return to the court in an authentic manner.

When I called Craig to gather some insights to help us customize the messaging, he mentioned that he loves wearing crazy animal skin shoes but that his feet were too swollen to wear his typical dress attire. He also let me in on the most anticipated question: what suit was he going to rocking for the first time back?

Armed with the info, the team and I created something we felt was fitting for the sideline legend. I worked with his wife Stacey to make sure Craig had something comfortable to rock on his big night back. We also asked our social audience to vote on which pair of KD 7iD ‘animal print’ extensions he should wear for a future game. We changed our social skins to match his suit. Knowing how close Craig is with Kobe, Kyrie, KD and LeBron and that he is ‘the man for every occasion’ we made a series of posts leading up to his comeback that included the finest moments of him with our signature athletes.

Overall, the night was a huge success because so many people made Craig feel loved. This is one of my favorite projects at Nike for obvious reasons.

UPDATE: Sadly Craig’s leukemia has returned. We are keeping him in our thoughts and are hopeful for a full recovery. If you are interested in learning more about Leukemia and would be interested in donating please go to www.lls.org.

“Without the suit it’s just a regular Thursday night. ”

— #welcomebacksager