<p><i><a href="https://www.sps.nyu.edu/experience/how-youll-learn/real-world.html">Real World courses at NYU SPS</a> immerse students in marketing campaigns at prominent companies. Here are the three coolest components from our </i>Real World Nike<i> course:</i></p>

<p>Each semester, students take on a real project brief from Nike, with Fall 2025 focusing on Toma El Juego (“Take the Game”), the brand’s youth-led street-soccer initiative. The students were tasked with extending Toma El Juego’s cultural impact beyond global hubs like Los Angeles, New York, and Miami, reaching deeper into regions where soccer’s next wave of players is emerging. Students researched markets, studied cultural touchpoints, and developed strategies to connect community identity to global sport.</p>

<p>Working in small teams, students experienced each stage of the marketing process, from strategy and creative ideation to tactics and rollout planning. Along the way, they received feedback and insights from Nike Vice President of Communications John Jowers, who helped shape the Toma El Juego platform, and Chris Isenberg, co-founder of Brooklyn-based creative agency Doubleday &amp; Cartwright. Participants are exposed to the realities of agency life and gain real-world experience at the crossroads of creativity and commerce.</p>

<p>Students visited the Nike SoHo flagship store to study how the brand tells stories through visual merchandising and point-of-sale design. An additional field experience later in the term offered an additional glimpse inside Nike’s world of innovation and culture. These opportunities provide a rare lens into how one of the world’s most recognizable brands connects strategy, emotion, and design.</p>

<p>At the end of the semester, students presented their full professional-grade pitch decks directly to Nike, with the potential for their concepts to be implemented in future brand initiatives. For Professor Daniel Isenberg, the course’s creator and instructor, that hands-on exposure is what makes <a href="https://www.sps.nyu.edu/experience/how-youll-learn/real-world/real-world-nike.html">Real World Nike</a> unique. “It’s one thing to study marketing,” he says. “It’s another to build something real, for a real client, with real-world stakes.”</p> <p>Jowers invited the class to attend Nike's&nbsp;Toma El Juego tournament when it takes place in New York City this spring, providing participants with the opportunity to see how their ideas were brought to fruition in a real-world context.</p>