In the past, Nike has been a well-known brand until the present, and it’s still popular. It’s common to see their products on the street, and even the value is rising as the time past. Through this essay, I aim to talk about the company and how they are marketing their brand.
1. History of Nike
1-1 Launch of the brand
It was founded in 1964 as Blue-Ribbon Sports by Bill Bowerman, a track-and-field coach at the University of Oregon, and his former student Phil Knight. They opened their first retail outlet in 1966 and launched the Nike brand shoe in 1972. The company was renamed Nike corporation in 1978 and went public two years later.
Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight first met at the university of Oregon. They built their relationship as a track-and-field coach and belonged to track-and-field team players. Phil Knight played as a medium- distance athlete while attending the university. After he graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business, he worked as a certified public accountant and had lectured at Portland State University until 1969.
When Phil was in his master degree course, he wrote about how the reasonable price of Japanese functional sneakers would change the whole American sneaker industry in the master thesis. As soon as he acquired a master’s degree, he went over to Japan to earn exclusive sales right in sneakers of Onitsuka tiger Company in America. As soon as he took the license, he returned to America with the sample sneaker from the Japanese company. Then he gave it to Bill Bowerman, who used to be his track team coach since he had a massive interest in new athlete shoes. After Bill got the sample, he suggested to Phill as being a business partner and give an opinion about sending shoe designs, he had made to Onitsuka tiger Company. This is how the base of Nike has begun.
1-2 Start of the business
Bill and Phil, two founder, named their brand Blue-Ribbon Sports in 1964 to make high-quality shoes for the athletes. It’s the root of Nike in the present. At first, they invested 500 dollars each in ordering 200 pairs of Onitsuka tiger company. Each of them performs differently. While working at the accounting firm, Phill Knight filled his car trunk with sneakers he bought and went to the track field and sold the product to the athletes. On the other hand, Bill Bowerman disassembled the product himself to study alternatives to enhance the function of the product and tested by making the track athletes at Oregon University. The first year’s income of Blue-Ribbon company was 8000 dollars, and the next year’s revenue was even better. As it got better and better, it became harder for to run a business and work as a professor and couch at the same time for Phill and Bill. As a result, Phil decided to hire his Stanford Graduate School colleague Jeff Johnson who was also an athlete, as manager of the company. Jeff Jefferson’s role was to oversee managing the company. He invented the company’s marketing material or made a promotional pamphlet. Furthermore, he organized the company product line systemically and developed a mail order service. As the company grew, they consistently had a conflict with Onitsuka tiger company. An occasion such as Blue-Ribbon Company couldn’t get supplied products from Onitsuka had occurred, and eventually, Blue-Ribbon company started to produce their creation. In 1964 the company built a factory for the production in Mexico and changed the company name from Blue-Ribbon to Nike. Nike is an English pronunciation that originated from the word Nike name of the goddess of victory in Greek mythology.
2. Symbol of Nike
When we think about Nike, two ideas come to our mind. Their brand symbol logo and slogan ‘just do it.’ First about the logo. A simple check sign is a trademark of Nike. When we look at the emblem without no an explanation, most people know it straight away. Like wisely, the logo is very powerful. Now we could wonder who made this simple but has a huge impact on design? The answer is a woman named Caroline Davidson has created it. She was a student who studied graphic design at Portland Graduate School. Phil, one of the founders of Nike, gets to know her as he was giving a lecture as a professor in Portland Graduate School at that time. He requests a logo design for his shoe company Nike. Caroline got inspired by the shape of the corner part of track-and-field and the wing of Nike, the goddess of victory. From her inspiration, she has made the swoosh shape logo. Unfortunately, Phil didn’t like the design, but as time passed and the company grew globally as a sport-fashion brand, he gave a 500share of Nike and with Nike logo-shaped gold ring embedded with diamonds to her.
Now let’s talk about how the slogan was made. Quoting speaks of one of the famous artists Henri Matisse lines and he said, “creativity takes courage.” When I read about the birth story of the motto this quote just popped in my mind. As we talk about the slogan, in 1988, Nike was having its first television campaign. A person named Dan Widen oversaw Nike’s first company advertisement. He was the founder of the Wieden + Kennedy advertisement company. He was the person who invented Nike’s slogan ‘just do it.’ The story where he got the idea I quite interesting. The report comes from a condemned criminal named Gary Gilmore in the 1970s. He was a notorious killer as he killed people very cruelly. On his execution day, his last word was “Let’s do it.” when he was facing down a firing squad at the last moment. Gary Gilmore’s previous work inspired Dan Widen. As time passed later in 2009, Dan Widen said in the interview, that he liked the part of doing it. So, he just used it. The fact that a globally known brand’s slogan has come from a condemned criminals could provoke controversy, but the consequence was an amazing success. Also, how audiences responded to the saying was a definitive factor in huge success. Sales rate raised to 31%. In 2009 according to the interview with Gary Gilmore, when he looked back at that time, he said, “None of us paid that much attention. We thought, ‘Yeah. That’d work.”
3. Marketing method
I can recall one day during my university lecture, my professor was teaching us various marketing ways of companies, and Nike was one of the lists. As my professor was explaining the marketing methods, it was quite interesting since they had a quite unique style in marketing their brand. Mostly when brands are advertising their brand, they normally mention their brand name and product to emphasize it to people, on the contrary, Nike doesn’t mention their brand name, unlikely compared to other brands, but they are very well recognized. I think their strategy is what keeps them well recognized and keeps getting more popular.
One strategy would be for Nike always try approaching to customers in an emotional way. Whenever when we are watching tv, it’s common to see Nike’s advertisements. The video advertising is mostly emotional with the approach for daily life. These characteristics bring positive vibes. It touches the sense to viewers and brings self-motivation and people who we could see in our daily lives doing the action of making efforts. It evokes consumer’s particular needs and feeling to contribute and get satisfied only with Nike’s products. For example, they show an athlete who lost one leg but tries to keep running. Every day he gets better and better, and his effort makes more strength to make him run further and further. Through this, audiences would get motivation for themselves by watching it. Furthermore, I can recall the latest one I seen was the Olympic theme of advertisement. I could feel the hope and the spirit of never giving up. Also, in the interview with Nike, the designer of this project said he had put more than 200hr of effort into finding the right image since the commercial was staged on two separate screens, and both sides of the image had to connect naturally as it moved from each side to another.
Through this, we can see Nike put’s a lot of effort because they think it values the most.
Second, collaborating with celebrities. Like GD, Michael Jordan, Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Billie Eilish, Rihanna, etc. Among them, Michael Jordan has contributed a great deal of profit to Nike. Nike’s long-term partnership with Michael Jordan has proved to be beneficial, in terms of sales for the company. Their collaboration resulted in “Air Jordan 1 Shoes”. Additionally, Nike teamed up with the famous basketball player to help design the “Air Jordan 1 Shoes”. Until now in the current moment, there have been various designs by Michael Jordan, and it is still the most popular shoe.
4. Darkside of Nike
As I mentioned about low manufacturing cost, this also could be a weakness for Nike. From the perspective of the consumers, due to the low manufacturing cost, we can get the affordable prices for footwear with good quality. But on the other hand, Nike’s footwear is made mostly, in foreign countries. According to business strategy hub.com in 2020, Vietnam produced 50%, China produced 22%, and Indonesia made 24% of the total Nike footwear. Other operations are in Argentina, Brazil, India, Italy, and Mexico. Those countries are developing countries the price of personal expense is low. Lots of people from developing countries, including young age of children, are working many hours for low wages. Those low wages aren’t enough for living. Nike supports humanity and all its potential, but they have a history of mistreating the workers. In 1991, there was a report about Nike’s factory practices in Indonesia published by an American labor activist Jeffrey Ballinger. He exposed Nike’s shady side how they treated workers. They had issues of providing below-minimum wages, child labour and appalling conditions for workers. The factories weren’t providing proper environment of the workplace and made employees, no matter how they were young work hours for low money, which could be hazards to health. Furthermore, according to the film named ‘Behind the Swoosh’ filmed by US college student Jim Keady, workers were paid 21.25 dollars in US currency per day while living in slums near open sewers and shared toilets and bathwater with multiple families. In addition, in 1996 magazine named Life reported a photo of a 12-year-old Pakistani boy sewing a Nike soccer ball. As the dark side of Nike was mentioned Nike put effort into managing its problem. According to the ethical clothing advocacy group Good on You, Nike is certified under the Fair Labor Association Workplace Code of Conduct. But a 2018 report by the Clean Clothes Campaign found that Adidas and Nike still pay “poverty” wages to workers. The report called on Nike and Adidas to commit to paying “living” wages (the amount of income needed to provide a decent standard of living) to its workers.
In conclusion, Nike has been a globally popular and well-known brand, which has grown to $224 billion as of Feb 2021. As it has massive impact on hope, they used for the goods and go worldwide.
References
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VinatgeDaon. (20th Oct 2021). Nike/Nike fashion/History of Nike. Available: https://blog.naver.com/j1080010/222542740176.
Bill Bostock. (10th Aug 2020). The sinister story of Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ slogan, which was inspired by the last words of a murderer before he was executed. Available: [link]
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