THE WILSON AIRLESS BASKETBALL
One of the coolest projects I got work on during my time at Wilson was the launch of the Wilson Airless Prototype and Gen1 Basketball launch campaigns.
During the development of this campaign I got to hold, bounce, and examine the ball and it’s really a revolution in design. It relies on a 3D printed lattice structure and research-grade materials to replicate the bounce of a traditional basketball. Below is a sample of work from the 2023 and 2024 toolkits.
2023 - WILSON AIRLESS PROTOTYPE
In 2023 Wilson released thee Wilson Airless Prototype. My involvement was in three key areas: establish the look and feel, develop a script and custom pedestal for the product reveal (live at the NBA All-Star Dunk Contest), and create a landing page to tell the product’s story and drive conversion.
ESTABLISHING THE LOOK
At the start of this project I was asked to develop a mood board to give this once-in-a-lifetime product launch a unique identity. We wanted the creative to be futuristic, technical, and ultra premium. Below is the final board:
This look and feel was used to inspire the hero video below (created and produced by Woodwork Agency). As well as a photoshoot involving NBA star KJ Martin.
TELLING THE STORY
One of the key assets that was built for this campaign was the below landing page for Wilson.com. At the time, this basketball was a prototype of what was to come. We knew there would be a lot of buzz so it was important to create a central place to tell the story of the product and allow anyone interested to sign up to learn more about if/when these would be available to the public. In the week following the reveal, this page had 10k+ visits, 600+ email sign-ups, and converted about $10k in sales for other parts of the business.
THE REVEAL
The Wilson Airless Prototype was revealed to the public at the 2023 NBA All-Star Dunk Contest by KC Martin and his father (former NBA Player, Kenyon Martin). Our team was tasked with developing a script and custom pedestal for the live reveal. I was heavily involved with both aspects of this part of the project. I designed the initial pedestal render in Sketchup, recommended materials, and sourced products (including lighting and mini smoke machine). I worked with Wilson Industrial Designer, Alan Lebowitz to build CAD files that were transformed into the final design.
The on-court reveal can be seen here:
2024 - WILSON AIRLESS GEN1
I realize this page is getting long. In 2024 Wilson dropped an extremely limited number of Airless Gen1 basketballs for sale. With the look and story established, the creative campaign was an extension of what had been done in the previous year. The team worked with Woodwork Agency again to develop tease + launch videos and captured some premium photography at our in-house studio. My involvement for 2024 was to build out educational content in the form of exclusive in-app content, landing + product pages, and emails. A sample of this work is below:
