Nike Asks Kids What They'd Do With 5 Extra Years Of Life

Kids are full of ambition. Ask any youngster 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' and they'll have an answer. It might be big, small or totally impossible, but you can be sure that they've packed the years ahead with dreams and goals. Sadly, today's children don't have as many years as they think they do.

This ad by Nike manages to be both inspirational and spine-chilling. We meet gang of kids, each with dreams as individual as they are. Some want to cure disease, some want to sing in front of big audiences, while some simply want to have more hamsters.

The ad opens with shots of empty playgrounds, abandoned baseball fields and drained, sad-looking swimming pools. And this explains the question the kids have been asked, "what would you do with five extra years of life".

Because of our increasingly sedentary lifestyles, today's kids are set up for health problems and a life expectancy five years shorter than their parents' generation. Whatever their dreams, the kids are all looking forward to a long life, filled with potential and excitement. A life that could be tragically cut short.

The parade of cute, hopeful faces declare their ambitions: to build time machines, be a chipmunk boss and teach siblings to enjoy tuna. It's a sobering thought to see these budding adventurers, scientists and artists declaring the ambitions of a life they know would be cut short.

The spot, designed by Wieden+Kennedy, was launched five days ago and has already garnered over 39,000 views.

Nike is hiding from the limelight in this ad, prefering instead to encourage viewers to visit designedtomove.org, which puts the clip's mesage into statistics and offers advice on how to get those five years back.

It's well worth a look.