The Legend of Santi is a personal project that my director friend Omri and I created and Nike decided to impliment. Santi was my production assistant on my Nike Corre job back in May. He came every day, and worked hard in his vintage style. Omri, Armando(my client) and I were joking around in the van as were driving to each location. Soon, the character of Santi evolved to the point where Armando loved it and decided to create a pitch to sell in the idea. Three weeks later we were back in Mexico City creating the Legend of Santi.
The whole campaign had to be written to sell Nike's Human Race, a 10K race in 25 cities on 8.31.08. Santi was localized to Mexico. We hit the ground running, and basically wrote the story of Santi, jumped into prepro, and started shooting within a week. The story evolved into 6x2-3 minute video episodes, 7 small viral clips, 4 stop motions, and a series of still photographs to illustrate the story and seed on the web promote the race.
The Story:
(ep 1)Santi is an average guy, and the town hero. Everyone loves him in his Barrio. He has a pet rooster named Bronco. He is a guy that thinks he is a hard core marathon runner, but really is a non-runner. He idolizes Steve Prefontaine. The openening scene shows him meditating and dreaming that he IS Prefontaine. His big over the top friend Pato is there to pump up his ego and help him train for the Human Race. (episode 2) Santi Runs into his arch nemesis, the core runner and they challenge each other to a showdown in Reforma, the monumental street in Mexico City. Santi is defeated, and is motivated to recruit his team and crush the arch nemesis at the Human Race. Santi's crush is Maribel, who is a latin pop singer. She falls in love with him after he impresses her with his stretches. After he begins training his team, Pato steals Bronco, and trades him for an iPod nano and Nike Plus system so he can better train for the human race. Santi's "Powersong" is Maribels music, and during his run with his new nano, he clicks his powersong and goes into a daydream that he is in a music video with her. Will he win the Human Race?
You can view the full photo story here: http://www.nickonken.com/Stories/TheLegendOfSanti/
We're working on subtitled versions of the actual videos, but for now they're in spanish. Still pretty funny. Here's what is released so far:
Episode One: The Begining
Episode Two: The Showdown
Prefontana Viral:
Santi, Bronco, and Pato Viral:
Santi also has a Facebook Profile, so if you're on Facebook, you should be his friend.
Stay tuned for more!
That...is...awesome!! Nice job man!
Posted by: Dan Brouillette | August 05, 2008 at 02:20 PM
Excellent! Way to think outside the box and great job on creating the campaign!
Posted by: J Sandifer | August 05, 2008 at 03:45 PM
Nick.... BRILLIANT, JUST BRILLIANT!!
Posted by: HOLT | August 06, 2008 at 09:08 PM