Marketing Greatness: The Beginning of an Era

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Marketing Greatness The Beginning of an Era
By Brian Hughes
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Research Question

• How did the Nike Michael Jordan campaigns change,
  as the company, and Jordans career developed?
  And how did these campaigns influence the
  marketing world around them?

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Cultural Relevance

• Michael Jordan changed the way athletes are
  marketed today
• This year Nike celebrates the 23rd anniversary of
  the Air Jordans
• Of Nikes 16.3 Billion Dollars in revenues in the
  2007 financial year, Brand Jordan comprised 800
  million dollars of sales

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Brief History of Nike

• Bowerman and the competitive edge
• Phil Knight the athlete made entrepreneur
• Blue Ribbon Sports
• Waffle Iron

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Brief History of Nike

• Nike and the Swoosh
• 1972 Olympic Trials in Eugene, OR
• PRE
• IPO/ the wrong direction

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Michael Jordan

• Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1963
• Emsley A. Laney High School
• North Carolina
• 1984 Draft

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Marketing Fundamentals

• Brand- a name, term, sign, symbol, or design that
  identifies the product
• Branding can add value to a product
• Brand equity

• A strong brand gives gives consumers a sense of
  security.
• Mike Dore
• Nike
• Athlete was the brand
• Sold being an athlete, sold being tough

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Wieden Kennedy

• I dont believe in advertising.
• Phil Knight
• Like trying to communicate to buddies, we dont
  want it to appear like advertising.
• Dan Wieden
• Just Do It

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A Bold Approach

• Sports marketing at the time
• Brand attributes/benefits
• Athlete endorsements
• Investment in Jordan
• Shaking up the sports marketing field
• Pioneered the idea attaching an athlete to a
  brand
• Paul Swangard

• Emotional branding focus
• Rarely talked about product
• Focused on images
• Nike built a brand on athlete worship.
• Nike Culture, pg 46
• Wasnt about selling shoes, but selling the
  image of an athlete.
• Mike Dore

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Changing Outlook on Marketing

• Difference between athlete and commodity
• People dont concentrate their emotional energy
  on products the way fans abandon themselves to
  the heroes of their game.
• Just Do It pg. 6

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Risky Business

• Diversified portfolio of players
• Over saturation of Jordan
• So much of Nikes public presence is hitched to
  the abbreviated half-lives of its athletes.
• Just Do It, pg. 23

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Jordan Takes Flight

• Wieden Kennedy
• Air Jordan I
• Jordan Flight campaign
• What Phil, and Nike have done is turn me into a
  dream.
• Michael Jordan

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Jordan Flight (1985)
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v3HdqNpR3MOo
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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

• Incredible demand
• NBA ban
• Your Sneakers or Your Life.
• First athletic shoes priced over 100 dollars
• Cases of murder and muggings

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Influence on NBA

• David Stern and the fledgling NBA
• Creating heroes and managing products
• Marketing emphasis
• NBA players agreement/ opt-out
• clause
• Nike and vertical integration

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Nike Kicks Back (1985)
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vzkXkrSLe-nQ
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Nikes Target Market

• Jordan was an agent of racial displacement
• Nike downplayed Jordans race
• Contrast to Spike Lee
• To many black youth Jordan represented hope
• He became an object of white and black desire

• Operation PUSH
• Nike knew the demand was coming from inner-city
  youth. Black kids saw a figure of hope and white
  kids thought it was cool that they could be like
  that.
• Paul Swangard

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Market Segmentation orMarket Exploitation

• Blackness seemed to be synonymous with lower
  class.
• Nike Culture, pg 55
• Nike was charging 100 dollars a shoe, for kids in
  poor communities
• Nike wanted to convey an authentic look into the
  ghetto, good and bad
• Benjy Wilson and Arkansas Red

• In regards to the Nike Spike Lee ads, Paul Gilroy
  said Spike Lees black portrayal created an
  imagined racial community and imaginary blackness
  which exists exclusively to further the interest
  of corporate America.

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Influence of Spike Lee

• American director, writer, actor.
• Nike inspired by his character in the movie Shes
  Gotta Have It.
• Spike and Mike ads
• 1988-1989 Jim Riswold

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Its Gotta be the Shoes (1991)
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vAbr_LU822rQ
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Market Penetration

• 200 million in sales
• Global Market
• U.S. Market

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Reebok

• Aerobic market
• Few endorsed athletes
• 1992 summer Olympic Games

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Building Trust

• Awareness on brand and consumer identity
• Opposite messages in commercials
• Removing the commodity from the ad

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Too Good to be True?

• Andrew Young led investigation into Nikes labor
  practices
• Poster child for mass exploitation.
• Mike Dore
• Nike was becoming what they were fighting against

• Business Week Most Hollow Companies

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Nikes Response

• Set-up panels to make sure labor practices are
  fair
• Environmental initiatives
• Local initiatives
• Social awareness marketing

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P.L.A.Y. Campaign

• Participate in the Lives of Urban Youth
• Michael Jordan was national co-chair
• Importance of sport in the lives of youth
• Credibility for Jordan and Nike

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P.L.A.Y. Campaign (1994)
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vKlRuHnnV5aA
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The Game

• Not who you are, but what you do
• Money and commercialization are a threats to the
  game
• Star athletes have motives questioned

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Frozen Moment (1996)

• Slow motion
• Importance of the game
• Values of The Game

http//www.youtube.com/watch?vNseKug63naM
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Jordan Retires

• Second retirement in 1999
• End of a golden run during which, Nike had been
  reinvented.
• Just Do It, pg. 5
• Sales went from 1 billion to 4 billion
• Profit rose 900

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Jordan Brand Today

• 1997 Nike makes Jordan subsidiary brand
• 23 Anniversary of Air Jordan
• Problem with younger generations
• Extension of brand with new players

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Conclusion
With its special way of distributing something
less palpable and more meaningful than shoes,
Nike could rewrite the rules of
marketing. -Brand Week
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Peering Back at the Legacy
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vFZSYD5OYSqc
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Work Cited
"Company Overview." Nike. 25 Feb. 2008
. Dore, Michael.
Personal Interview. 3 March 2008 "Failure by
Nike." Advertisement. 22 Jan. 2008
. "Fr
ozen Moment by Nike." Advertisement. 18 Jan. 2008
. Goldman, Robert, and Stephen Papson. Nike
Culture. London Sage Publications, 1998
Jensen, Jeff. "Nike Comes Out to PLAY."
Advertising Age 28 Mar. 1994. 28 Jan. 2008
http//www.lexisnexis.com
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Work Cited Cont.
"Jordan Flight by Nike." Advertisement. 3 Feb.
2008 .
Katz, Donald. Just Do It the Nike Spirit in
the Corporate World. Massachusetts Adams Media
Corporation, 1994.
"Mars Blackmon by Nike." Advertisement. 22 Jan.
2008 .
"Michael Jordan Banned Commercial by Nike."
Advertisement. 2 Mar. 2008 /watch?vzkXkrSLe-nQ. "P.L.A.Y. by Nike."
Advertisement. 28 Jan. 2008 m/watch?vKlRuHnnV5aA. Philip, Kotler, and
Armstrong Gary. Principals of Marketing. Upper
Saddle River, NJ Prentice-Hall, 2006. 250-255.
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Work Cited Cont.
"Retirement by Nike." Advertisement. 22 Jan. 2008
. Sca
rborough, Rowan. "Critics Hit Nike Ad with
Sneaker Suspicion." Washington Times 31 Oct.
1996, sec. A 2. Lexis Nexis. University of
Oregon, Eugene. 28 Jan. 2008. Swngard, Paul.
Personal interview. 11 Feb. 2008. Swoosh! Inside
Nike. CNBC. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 12 Feb. 2008.