For two summer internships and two years following I worked in brand and sports marketing at Nike Running. Bringing to life physical incarnations of the brand and connecting runners with Nike products and athletes.
Lead brand objective: "win the hearts and minds of high school runners". Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) served as the pinnacle achievement of that task, attended religiously by CEO Mark Parker. Hosted annually, NXN selected through eight regional cross country competitions the 44 best teams and 90 top individuals to compete in Portland for the national championship.
My role was to manage the look and feel of these events, drive digital marketing and produce the championship live video broadcast.
For an annual competition of bragging rights, Nike invited the 40 best boy and girl cross country runners from Oregon and Washington to duke it out literally head to head on the Nike Campus. The 'clash' was captured live via a local TV helicopter and broadcast down to a video board on the main field.
I developed a custom waffle iron that tastily told the story of one of Nike's first shoes. We used these waffle irons at brand events. I still see a bunch of instagram postings of these waffles to this day.