NEVER DONE EVOLVING:
Serena willams’ legacy
How do you honor a GOAT like Serena Williams?
With an AI match-up of the ages.
As part of Nike’s 50th Anniversary we celebrated Serena’s legacy by traveling back in time leveraging machine learning to create a match-up between Serena from her first Grand Slam at the 1999 US Open versus Serena at her most recent Grand Slam at the 2017 Australian Open. This Cannes Grand Prix winning work showcased how Serena got to where she is today and how she changed the face of tennis.
HOW IT WORKED
Harnessing the power of advanced AI and machine learning, we were able to model each era of Serena’s playing style: decision making, shot selection, reactivity, recovery and agility based on archival footage. Building on the vid2player technique developed by Stanford University, we were able to bring the models of Serena to life by re-rendering the players from each generation into an entirely new scene and have them appear to be playing and responding to each other.
The REsults
The result was seeing both Serena’s play each other for 130,000 games and 5,000 matches, enough tennis matches to stream for an entire year if played back-to-back.
The final gameplay was broadcasted to the public as a YouTube livestream the day after Serena announced her “evolution” from tennis, reaching over 1.69 million of Nike’s subscribers. Lead up to the live event included social media posts promoting the broadcast across Nike’s Instagram and Twitter channels as well as Serena’s channels.
AWARDS & REcognition
Cannes Lion Grand Prix | 2023 Digital Craft: Curation of Data
2 Clio Awards | Gold for Sports and Gold for Digital & Artificial Intelligence
Clio Award | Silver for Branded Content
Webby Award | Winner for AI, Metaverse, and Virtual Technical Achievement
D&AD | 2023 Shortlist Digital Use of Data & Digital Design / Data Visualisation
Victorian Premier Design Award
Ad Age “Nike AI Ad Pits Serena Williams Against Serena Williams”
TEAM
Nike Team: Rafael Paes, Aaron Belchere, Dawn Weeman, Leslie Robarge, Jordan Hoagbin, Trelawny Davis, Chrysi Diamond, Sarah Barkley Porter
Agency Partner: AKQA