Nike’s WNBA Ad is Rich and Joyful

Nike’s new ad starring WNBA and Olympic legend A’Ja Wilson is a rich and complex piece of work. It’s packed with cultural and sporting references, lore from the player’s career and a powerful celebration of Black girl magic. The ad commemorates Wilson’s status as the first Black woman player to get a Nike signature shoe, the A’One, which launched last month.

Created by Wieden + Kennedy Portland, the commercial puts a fresh spin on the Nike model of tracking an athlete’s development from kid to superstar. Wilson’s girlhood hanging with friends and playing clapping games is evoked by a troupe of girls with beaded and braided hair, dressed in pink. They’re performing an all-new song and routine based on classic Southern clapping game “Miss Mary Mack”, with lyrics celebrating Wilson’s achievements, before the athlete herself takes center stage at the end of the ad.

Nike have a proud tradition of making ads which reach out to every viewer and inspire them. But they’re equally good at making ads which truly speak to a particular section of their audience, and that’s what they’ve done here. The A’Ja Wilson commercial was released just in time for the start of the 2025 WNBA season and it’s tailored to particularly appeal to two overlapping audiences: Black Americans and sports fans.

So like many sports themed ads, performance with the general public isn’t the best way of assessing this. We’ve written two reports which are relevant here, Feeling Seen and The Sport Dividend. Both of them explore how ads can get a “dividend” in effectiveness among specific populations, and how in some cases it’s worth pursuing that even if effectiveness with the general public is lower.

In the case of the A’Ja Wilson ad we tested it among two specific samples, one of sports fans and the other of Black Americans. The ad is dense with references and imagery designed specifically to appeal to these groups – it’s a powerful celebration of the culture around Black American girlhood and growing up, and it’s about a WNBA icon.

So we’d expect the commercial to perform well with both groups, and it does. Among sports fans in general it gets a good 3-Star Rating, with viewers appreciating the link to women’s basketball. But it really excels with a Black American audience, netting an exceptional 5.3-Star Rating. The Black American sample found the ad empowering and joyful, picking up on the specific references to Black culture, from the beaded braids to the modern spin on a classic schoolyard game.

This ad is a great example of how to go all-in on appealing to a particular audience. As part of a campaign that mixes ads with general appeal and ones with a specific target, it’s brilliantly placed to deliver a major “diversity dividend” for Nike. The message of Feeling Seen in particular is that audiences want ads that reflect their own lives and culture, and the wider public appreciates that authenticity too. Nike have made an ad for the community who love A’Ja Wilson the most, and they’ve responded with love for the brand too.