Nike Sportswear · Launch
Air Max
Pulse
Creative Director + Producer · Ona Creative · 2023
Air Max Pulse was a brand-new silhouette, and Nike didn’t want it sold on tech or comfort. They wanted it inside real culture. So the brief became style — and how style flexes city by city. As Creative Director I built a six-city visual tour — Toronto, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Oakland and New York — on the ground, hiring local creators and handing them the mic instead of dictating the look. I directed and produced on the road in four of the six, often landing in a city without locations locked, scouting them on arrival and styling every look the morning before shooting with an EKIN. Oakland and New York were shot by other directors; I led post-production, retail, and every digital asset across all six.
Shot on early-2000s digital point-and-shoot cameras — sourced specifically for the campaign — paired with crisp modern handhelds. Talent shot each other on set with assigned digicams: unstabilized footage, jumpy zooms, elevated UGC with a twist. Nothing cliché, everything intentional — LA's pastel low-rise architecture, Atlanta's bold textures, each city's own "if you know, you know" energy. We worked with the EKINs and the talent to choose every location — if you know, you know. The people who live in a city know the spots, so they picked them. Real people, in their real neighbourhoods, in their real style. Nike wanted Pulse connected to real communities, and specifically to Black and Latinx ones.
I built Toronto as a day-to-night. You start the afternoon hanging with your homies, you end up at the club, and you finish at late-night hot pot. The spots weren’t landmarks — they were the nightclubs and the tables you only know if you know.
A favourite fried chicken place. A convenience store in a genuinely hood neighbourhood. The places someone who actually lives there would name first, not the ones a location scout would find.
A laundromat. An iconic pizza place. A bridge that turned out epic. Ordinary places that carry the city, shot like they matter.
“Style-wise, ripped jeans and unisex clothing are both very Dallas. And being big and bold because we're Texas.” — Candice Parramore, Model & Former Baller
I wasn’t on set in Oakland or New York, but I led post-production and every digital and retail asset for both.
Wheatpastings in every city, plus bold high-traffic digital billboards in New York and Los Angeles — a fast-cut mix of local footage, layered stills, and kinetic animations, each digital execution cycling through the city's own name across three screens. Centerpiece: a 3-panel CIRCA billboard wrapping the Staples Center in Downtown LA. Putting Pulse up at that scale in six cities also did something quieter — it gave real exposure to talent in the cities that usually get skipped.
