While International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate women in all walks of life, Nike, the American sportswear manufacturer wants to bring women in sports to the front, especially sportswomen in China.
To achieve this, the brand set up a roundtable talk on 8 March, with a line-up consisting of four of China’s most recognisable sports faces, including Li Na, a Chinese professional tennis player, competitive swimmer Liu Xiang, footballer Wu Haiyan and Wang Shanshan, captain of the Chinese Women’s football team who recently reclaimed the Asian crown, taking home a Gold at the AFC Women’s Asian Cup in early February.
The presence of these female athletes not only allows the brand to leverage China’s growing national pride in sports but also appeals to women consumers.
Centred around the topic of “You’re Born to be Ready”, the talk hopes to inspire girls in China, especially those living in less developed areas, to recognise their athletic potential and ultimately, to get involved in sports, with these female sports icons’ sharing their thoughts on why sports are important to girls and personal stories of how doing sports has helped them to grow as a person.
The talk also marks the relaunch of Nike’s Boundless Girl project, which was initiated by the brand in 2019. The brand has partnered with the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation for the second phase of the initiative, trying to bring those athletic role models closer to teenage girls whose talent in sports might have been restrained due to financial difficulties.
The first project in China that aims to empower girls through sports has seen its footprint come to a total of 323 primary schools in the past three years, bringing more than 30,000 girls into the world of sports.
