JD Sports and Nike take over Liverpool for the Air Max 110

JD Sports and Nike take over Liverpool for the Air Max 110

Most product launches struggle just to catch a city’s eye.

But in Liverpool, the Nike Air Max 110 never had to fight for attention.

Liverpool’s bond with the shoe runs deep. The city is Nike’s top UK market for the 110, and over time, the trainer stopped being just a product and became part of Liverpool’s identity.

So when JD Sports and Nike asked us to launch a Liverpool-exclusive Air Max 110, we knew our task was not to invent a bond, but to honour one.

We had to create something that truly measured up.

On 1 October, we swept across Liverpool with a campaign that lit up the city’s biggest digital screens, filled the streets with flyposting, projected light onto iconic buildings, and introduced a media first.

For the first time in its history, the Liverpool ECHO changed its masthead for a brand.

For one day, the ECHO became the EC110.

This special edition wrapped the front and back pages, putting the new Air Max 110 front and centre on one of Liverpool’s most iconic media brands, and giving the campaign a tangible piece of the city itself.

This was not a generic campaign parachuted in by a media plan. The shoe was crafted for Liverpool, with “Scouse” details and the city skyline on its sole. We wanted every part of the campaign to feel just as rooted.

Across Liverpool, the campaign moved from newspaper stands to the streets.

Giant digital screens broadcast the creative citywide. Flyposting brought the message to the pavement. After dark, light projections transformed Liverpool’s buildings into glowing canvases.

Liverpool FC’s Dominik Szoboszlai led the campaign, uniting football, fashion, and a shoe that has found a home in Liverpool like nowhere else in the UK.

The campaign also continued a relationship we have been building with JD Sports and Nike Air Max for the past three years.

Every time we revisit Liverpool and the 110, the challenge grows: how do you make people see something they already love and claim as their own in a completely new light?

This time, the answer was right in front of us.

The Liverpool ECHO has chronicled the city for generations. Renaming it, even for a single day, gave us a media idea that could only belong to Liverpool.

Nicola Orrell, Managing Director at Edison Media, said:

“The 110 has a relationship with Liverpool that you simply can’t manufacture. We wanted to take something that already means a lot to the city and celebrate it in a way that felt specific to Liverpool.

“Seeing the Liverpool ECHO become the EC110 for the first time was a big moment for us. The ECHO is part of the city, which is exactly why the idea worked.

“We’ve worked with JD and Nike Air Max for three years now, and the challenge each time is finding somewhere new to take it. This year that meant the newspaper takeover, projections, flyposting and some of Liverpool’s biggest digital screens.

“The shoe says ‘Scouse’. It has the Liverpool skyline on its sole. Everything about the campaign needed to feel like it belonged here too.”

The result was a launch shaped by Liverpool, not just set within it, putting the Air Max 110 on the city’s newspapers, streets, buildings, and screens—the very places that made the shoe iconic.