We have a very focused category that has been built around the personalities of John McEnroe and Andre Agassi. We created the Challenge Court Collection—very young, very anti-country club, very rebellious—and we became the number one selling tennis category in the world. So instead of diluting what Challenge Court stood for, we created a second category within the tennis framework called Supreme Court, which is more toned down.
Each of those categories stands for something distinct. Have you exhausted the list of things that fit under the Nike umbrella? The core consumer in fitness is a little different from the core consumer in sports. Fitness activities tend to be individual pursuits—things like hiking, bicycling, weight-lifting, and wind surfing.
And even within the fitness category, there are important differences. We found that men do fitness activities because they want to be stronger or live longer or get their heart rate or blood pressure down.
Their objectives are rather limited. But in , we acquired Cole-Haan, a maker of dress shoes and accessories. Cole-Haan is part of Nike, Inc. In fact, when people talk about Nike, the TV ads are practically all they want to talk about. But we became a billion dollar company without television. Our first TV campaign was for Visible Air, which was a line of shoes with transparent material along the midsole so consumers could see the air-cushioning technology.
Having gone through the painful experience of laying people off and cutting overhead in the mids, we wanted the message about our new line of shoes to hit with a punch, and that really dictated TV advertising. The Visible Air launch was a critical moment for a couple of reasons. Visible Air was a hugely complex product whose components were made in three different countries, and nobody knew if it would come together.
Production, marketing, and sales were all fighting with each other, and we were using TV advertising for the first time. There was tension all the way around. We launched the product with the Revolution campaign, using the Beatles song. We wanted to communicate not just a radical departure in shoes but a revolution in the way Americans felt about fitness, exercise, and wellness. The ads were a tremendous hit, and Nike Air became the standard for the industry immediately thereafter. There are 50 different competitors in the athletic shoe business.
Why do people get married—or do anything? Because of emotional ties. That approach distinguishes us from a lot of other companies, including Reebok.
Our advertising tries to link consumers to the Nike brand through the emotions of sports and fitness. We show competition, determination, achievement, fun, and even the spiritual rewards of participating in those activities. By doing new things.
Innovation is part of our heritage, but it also happens to be good marketing. We saw the company as having a great competitive advantage because we had a great product at a great price. And it worked a little bit. But what really made things pop was when we innovated with the product. We need a way of making sure people hear our message through all the clutter.
Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan stand for different things. Characterizing them accurately and tying them to products the athletes really use can be very powerful. We test the concepts beforehand, but we believe that the only way to know if an ad works is to run it and gauge the response.
Although some of the calls will be negative, complaints tend to be in the great minority. Our basic philosophy is the same throughout the business: take a chance and learn from it. What are some of the risks? The Hare Jordan, Air Jordan commercial that aired during the Super Bowl represented a big risk from both a financial and a marketing standpoint.
It showed Michael Jordan teaming up on the basketball court with Bugs Bunny. It could have been too silly or just plain dumb. The only criticism we got was from the National Stutterers Association for using Porky Pig at the end.
Humor is always a risky business. Take our advertising to women. We produced some ads in that we thought were very funny but many women found insulting.
They were too hard edged. We got so many complaints that we spent three or four years trying to understand what motivates women to participate in sports and fitness. We did numerous focus groups and spent hundreds of hours on tennis courts, in gyms, and at aerobics studios listening to women. Those efforts paid off in our recent Dialogue campaign, which is a print campaign that is very personal.
The text and images try to empathize and inspire. Even there it was risky to use such an intimate voice in the ads, but it worked. The campaign to launch the Air running shoe comes to mind. The advertising agency was working with seven directors from around the world and trying to translate words into all those different languages.
In the end, we used no words, just images of various kinds. One ad showed a spaceship zooming in on a Waffle Trainer outsole. Another showed cartoon characters bouncing on the shoe to demonstrate the cushioning. When we looked at the ad a month before its Super Bowl launch, it seemed fragmented and almost goofy. It was neither animal nor vegetable.
So we ran a Nike general purpose ad, which was safe but somewhat boring. You have to be creative, but what really matters in the long run is that the message means something. You have to convey what the company is really all about, what it is that Nike is really trying to do. They spend countless hours trying to figure out what the product is, what the message is, what the theme is, what the athletes are all about, what emotion is involved.
People at Nike believe in the power of emotion because we feel it ourselves. A while ago there was a book published about Nike, and one person who reviewed it said he was amazed that a group of intelligent, talented people could exert so much passion, imagination, and sweat over pieces of plastic and rubber.
It saves us a lot of time. Sports is at the heart of American culture, so a lot of emotion already exists around it. People already know a lot about him.
The trick is to get athletes who not only can win but can stir up emotion. We want someone the public is going to love or hate, not just the leading scorer. Jack Nicklaus was a better golfer than Arnold Palmer, but Palmer was the better endorsement because of his personality. To create a lasting emotional tie with consumers, we use the athletes repeatedly throughout their careers and present them as whole people.
So consumers feel that they know them. We take the time to understand our athletes, and we have to build long-term relationships with them. Those relationships go beyond any financial transactions. We like them and they like us. We win their hearts as well as their feet. There are no Super Bowl winners, so there are no obvious personalities to represent the activity, which leads to an entirely different type of advertising.
We still convey emotion, but we do it on a much more personal level. What if a Nike athlete does something illegal or socially unacceptable? But if you do your scouting well, you can avoid a lot of those situations. Three or four years ago we were recruiting two very exciting college basketball players, but before we signed them we checked with our network of college coaches. We learned that one of them had a cocaine problem and the other could only play good offensive ball with his back to the basket.
Is social responsibility part of being a marketing-oriented company? But the thing I was missing until recently is the issue of visibility—and that is tied to marketing. And that means having good relations with the press. When it comes to the product, America gets its opinions from advertising. When it comes to Nike as a whole, America gets its opinions from the press. Nike is not about going to a ball game. We can see now that the entire industry has gone through a major shift.
You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. Subscribe for unlimited access. Create an account to read 2 more. So it may come as a surprise […] by Geraldine E. We have to win. A number of social media users have also criticised the new shoes. You are banned! This world is goneeee. Click here to join our channel indianexpress and stay updated with the latest headlines.
Coronavirus Explained. Click here for more. The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. But don't expect what u see in the pic. Flipkart Customer Certified Buyer 2months ago. Not much comfortable overall Average product not bad,but sole is too good. Kakaraparthi Mahesh Certified Buyer 7days ago.
Highly disappointed with this pair of shoes. It's better to barefoot than wearing this shoes. Any one reading this review, I want to request you. Dont buy th Abhishek Singh Certified Buyer Mar, Flipkart Customer Certified Buyer 6months ago. Just Do It: As the tag line implies. Amazing shoes amazing looks.
Shoes are really good and a head turner. Thank You Flipkart for super fast delivery!
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