Founded in New York by Alain Sylvain in the early 2000s, Sylvain had a tribal logo and an identity built around the narrative of misfits, rebels who never quite belonged in traditional agencies. It is one of the foremost independent strategy shops in the world. The kind of agency that turns a mandate into a psychosocial document: REMIDA partnered with their Amsterdam office.
FRAMING THE CHALLENGE.
In 2021, Nike EMEA arrived with a question formulated four years ahead of its answer: how to engage Generation Z more deeply in direct sales (mono-brand stores and online) by the year 2025. It was vision-driven strategy, and it demanded something rare: the patience to understand a generation before attempting to reach it.
SETTING THE DIRECTION.
REMIDA joined as the qualitative research partner on psychosocial strategy. The requirement was specific: full working fluency in both English and French, deep on-field expertise in psychosocial studies. From there, the work was divided into three distinct phases.
DOING THE WORK.
50 GenZ participants across London and Paris kept a structured digital diary for five consecutive days, before a select few sat down for in-depth semi-structured interviews, conducted in their own language. A parallel desk research phase mapped “fair play” sports moments and cultural brand activations across news, magazines, podcasts and social content, scanning the 6 to 8 months prior for signals that mattered. Everything was then brought together into a 3-chapter playbook. ”The Good Sports”: what it means to be an everyday athlete today. “Core Values”: wisdom, power, truth, escape, distilled from the interviews as the emotional grammar of a generation. “Activations”: brand examples that had lived those values, with specific recommendations for Nike.
Qualitative Ethnographic Research
Qualitative Ethnographic Research
Field research across 50 GenZ subjects across London and Paris, via digital diary and semi-structured one-to-one interviews, conducted in both English and French.
Cultural Desk Research
Cultural Desk Research
Mapping of fair play moments and culturally relevant brand activations, building a highly curated, unconventional benchmarking framework.
Comparative Strategic Playbook
Comparative Strategic Playbook
A values-driven synthesis structured across 3 chapters (The Good Sports, Core Values, Activations) with tailored recommendations for Nike EMEA.
Ph from sylvain.co
IMPACT.
The playbook delivered to Sylvain, and through them to Nike EMEA, was a long-range instrument of foresight: a value map of Generation Z, built from the ground up, designed to guide strategic decisions across the following 4 years.
Where strategy becomes real.
