11 Lessons From Nike's Phil Knight To Develop Their Marketing Strategy
Nike is a prime example of how a company penetrates culture to the extent that the Swoosh is a symbol of American Iconography. In 1992, Phil Knight laid the groundwork for Nike’s High-Performance Marketing. To this day, they have stayed true to their principles. How did a small shoe company from Oregon scale to become the global leader in apparel? After examining Nike’s Marketing Strategy, here are the lessons we’ve learned from the "Shoe Dog" himself.
1. How does Nike define a brand?
A brand is something that has a clear-cut identity among consumers, which a company creates by sending out a clear, consistent message over a period of years.”
2. How Nike First Understood Their Consumers
In Nike’s early days, they were a running shoe company. Their employees were runners.
Because of this, they understood their consumers very well.
When it was time to branch out into other sports, they had to do the work to understand their new customer base.
Nike would go to the top players of that sport and would do everything possible to understand what they needed from a tech and design standpoint.
Their engineers would create a product that would give the athletes what they needed both functionally and aesthetically.
all of their efforts were focused on their core customer base because wanted their shoes to have the same functionality for because they wanted their product to have the same functionality for “Michael Jordan or Joe American Public.”
3. How Nike Developed Its First Marketing Strategy
To get clarity on who their customer was Nike created a pyramid with three sections.
Nike’s “core consumers,” were the athletes who were performing at the highest level of the sport at the top of a pyramid.
Sports are a big part of American culture, and if your favorite athlete is wearing Nike's then you know they'll perform.
In the middle of the pyramid was the weekend warrior or the jock. This group of people pay the closest attention to the top of the pyramid and are directly influenced by them.
At the bottom of the pyramid was everyone else.
60% of their product was bought by people who don’t use it for the actual sport.
Everything they did was focused on their core customer.
Nike had a great product to offer.
Their ads were focused on the product itself. They were successful but a minor setback in the 70s would force Nike’s messaging to evolve.
4. How Nike Became A Mission-Based, Marketing Oriented Company
In the 70s a failed venture into the casual shoe market confused Nike's customers and did real damage to their brand identity.
globally sales started to plateau.
In America sales gradually started to decline.
This forced Nike to focus and reinvent its strategy.
in fact, the Jordan project was launched as an attempt to turn their trajectory around.
Before they could create a clear-cut identity among consumers, they had to define their mission as a company.
Something had to be done and Phil Knight knew they needed to find a way to speak to the people all the way at the bottom.
5. How Nike Understood Its Customer’s Desires
Just like Nike did everything to understand their core customers (Top-Athletes), they did for the everyday Joe.
Knight says, “To understand the rest of the pyramid, we do a lot of work at the grass-roots level.”
They would go to amateur sports events, hit the gyms, and visit tennis courts.
Then their engineers and design team spent a lot of time talking to the athletes about what they needed both functionally and aesthetically.
“Whether you’re talking about the core consumer or the person on the street, the principle is the same: you have to come up with what the consumer wants, and you need a vehicle to understand it” – Phil Knight
6. How Did Nike Finally Understand Its Brand?
Understanding consumers was only part of it. Understanding the brand was the other half. This shifted Nike’s focus.
Because they had a solid mission statement, a clear direction. They could tolerate the risks that come with not testing ads. They asked critical questions. Their mission informed the overall themes of their messaging.
7. How Nike Created Campaigns That Fostered Emotional Connections With Their Audience
They wanted to create advertising that would wake their audience up.
How would they go about it?
Doing new things.
Nike tested concepts beforehand, but the only way to know if an ad worked was to run it and gauge the response.
To some, this is a risky approach, to Nike the risk was becoming obsolete. In a time of crisis, they knew they had to maintain their brand's visibility.
8. How Nike Built A Loyal Audience
The quality of their product wasn't the issue. however, advertisements that focus only on the product aren't a way to create demand.
So, Nike began putting their customers in the center of their ads.
The messaging went beyond selling benefits, what made Nike trustworthy to the audience was selling their mission.
Nike isn't selling products. They're selling you a community to be a part of. A community that willingly accepts the risky journey that comes with chasing your dreams.
Nike designed ads that speak to a universal truth.
Becoming better versions of ourselves. Nike invited us into their company's culture.
9. How Nike leverages its brand’s philosophy to supercharge its content marketing strategy.
Unfortunately, traditional ways of creating ads can be bottlenecks.
By the end, you have a watered-down advertisement that lacks authenticity.
The real risk is overthinking.
Nike did the opposite.
At its core Nikes basic philosophy is the same throughout the business: take a chance and learn from it.
They didn’t test ads.
Because they believed the only way to gauge the success of an ad was by the response of their audience.
If your mission and intentions are solid, then you can eliminate the things that are not in line with it.
It accelerates the creative process.
You avoid wasting time.
This allowed developing a voice through experimentation.
It sounds risky to some, but the benefits are much greater.
10. How Nike Used The NBA Banning Michael Jordan’s To Generate $50 million
Fast-vertising is when you act fast to create media around topics that are culturally relevant.
After the NBA banned Michael Jordan's first shoe for not being up to code, Nike ran with that news and created an ad that pushed them over the 1-billion-dollar revenue mark.
Nike anticipated selling 100,000 pairs in the first year. After this commercial, they generated a lot of demand. The original projection changed to 4 million pairs.
11. How Nike Used Athletes To Scale Their Success
Why did using athletes work?
The emotion already exists around it. Knight says it’s inspirational to watch an athlete “push the limits of performance.”
Typically, companies used celebrities as a way to advance their message. Often, celebrities are used to increase the company's visibility but do not have an interest in the success of the product they're selling.
Nike wanted customers to feel like they knew their favorite athletes.
Since the beginning, Nike has had an intimate relationship with its athletes. Some athletes are fortunate enough to have a say in the design process as well.
Since sports are at the heart of American culture, Nike used influencers so customers could develop deeper connections with the brand.
Using influencers is a way to get new awareness and reach. The Familiarity of these athletes opens the door for Nike to create campaigns that are relevant and relatable.
Today Nike has many categories under its brand's umbrella. They have managed to penetrate everything from performance to fashion. As of December 2021, Nike has earned a market cap of roughly 269 billion.
12. How Nike Scaled Without Losing Focus
Air Jordan had two great years and then fell on its face. it became clear that even if air Jordan got them over the last hurdle was not going to carry them forward. They began to question if they were stretching air Jordan too far, so Nike went back to the drawing board and developed new segments within basketball.
Two new segments came from that.
The force series:
Shoes that were suitable for aggressive players who use their strength to get an advantage on the court.
The segment was represented by David Robinson and Charles Barkley.
The Flight series:
Flexible and lightweight shoes that are suitable for players who used their quickness and athleticism to gain an advantage like Scottie Pippen.
This provided more variety to the weekend warrior and jocks in the middle of their pyramid.
Even though these two segments were created the images and themes of their advertisements were consistent with the message Nike has been pushing all along.
Putting Together Nike’s High-Performance Marketing
Nike has dominated by rolling out compelling ad campaigns. The most important being Just Do It.
Nike doesn't consider the line to be just a slogan, it's more of a brand identity.
JUST DO IT is a philosophy that can be applied to all aspects of your life.
It is more an invitation to participate in their company culture.
It's authentic and addresses their center's mission.
What is best is welcoming individuals to participate in what you have confidence in and what you stand for.
Nike's strength is their ability to resonate with us and create advertising that speaks to what we really want.
To be better versions of ourselves
