Nike’s commercials featuring LeBron James are going to transcendent to a whole new level. The basketball star will release a series of animated spots, which will represent his personality split into four: the 16-year old Kid LeBron (the leading character), the Athlete LeBron, the Business LeBron (voiced by James himself) and the Wise LeBron, just like in one Nike’s adverts. The upcoming web-episodes project, which will also feature the celebrity in live-action segments, is sponsored by Hewlett-Packard and Intel and produced by Mr. James’s company Spring Hill Productions.
Illustration: The New York Times
The first season of the animated cartoons entitled ‘The LeBrons’ will air on the basketball star’s website lebronjames.com and the project’s YouTube channel this spring. The ten 5-6 minute spots are designed to reach out to younger generation and inspire the kids to become more socially conscious and adopt proper principles of children’s life like not cutting the classes, staying off drugs or loving their family (each episode will be dedicated to one theme of this kind). According to The New York Times, the spots will revisit some of the athlete’s best-known off-the-court performances, which will help drive a boring mentoring tone out of the series and inspire kids to get more sportive and—maybe—take LeBron’s place in the future.
“I think everybody, even grown-ups now, today all wish they could be a superhero,” Mr. James commented in his telephone interview to The New York Times. “I definitely had that imagination of, like, wow, it would be great to look over a city and take down the bad guys. Absolutely, I had those visions. I’m mostly a kid at heart, and I’m the athlete, of course, that everyone sees. But I also have a business side, a cool side, and I love antique stuff and classical music. I guess that’s the old man side of me.”
The upcoming project was developed with a charitable twist as well, since some proceeds from the show will be donned to purchase computers for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America organization (still, it’s not specified if the money will be obtained through paid screening, selling DVDs of the series or something else).
Below there are some of Nike’s adverts with the four LeBrons.