Nike’s ‘Find Your Greatness’ Advertising Campaign: A Creative Brief

Overview of Nike and its products

Nike is an American MNC, founded in 1964, which excels in the process of designing, developing, creating, marketing and selling apparel, footwear, accessories and equipments. It was officially transformed from Blue Ribbon Sports to Nike in the year 1971 (Elliott 2016). The name of the company was suggested from the name of the Greek goddess of victory. The company is headquartered in Oregon in the Portland area. The company is regarded as the biggest supplier of athletic shoes and apparels in the world in addition to being a primary manufacturer of sports goods. According to the latest news, the value of the Nike brand in 2017 was $29.6 billion. Different products are sold under this brand name such as Nike +, Air Max, Nike blazers, Nike Pro and others. Apart from creating sports goods and apparels, the company is also advanced in the field of operating retail stores, which is known as Niketown (Grady 2017). Renowned athletes and sport stars are sponsored by the company under their trademark of ‘just do it’ and the Swoosh logo. However, this creative brief will consider the development of the Nike products for the ‘find your greatness’ campaign. This campaign was launched in the year 2012 in the London Olympics.

The advertising campaign will help in promoting the different products of the company so that the right customers can be targeted by the company. The company is a leader in the sportswear industry and the advertising campaign will help in generating more revenues. The creativity of the ad will help in providing better information to the customers regarding the products that are being manufactured by them. The campaign was introduced during the London Olympics that was held in 2012, as it brings together sports people from all over the world. The ad focussed on bringing out the best among the sports people so that the competition can be done in a friendly manner. The competitive spirit in the Olympic along with the best outcome from the sports persons helped in making the ad successful in nature (Huang and Sarigollu 2014).

The company is one of the leaders in supplying the sportswear equipment to the customers and uses the method of value based pricing so that the growth in its level of profit can be calculated in a proper manner. The ad that was made had a creative tea who had invested their time and labour in making the campaign successful in nature. The main objective of the ad was to capitalize on the sale of its good and products during the time of London Olympics. The advertisement was focussed on increasing the level of sales of the goods, which can be done by increasing the price to develop the campaign. This helped the campaign to be successful (Khan 2014).

The use of advertisement campaign is to increase the level of awareness among the customers by providing proper information so that the sales of the products and goods can be increased by the company. Placing the ad in the right manner and in the right place will help in attracting majority of the customers. The ad developed by Nike was launched during the London Olympics, as it brings together many tourists and sports people in the same location for a certain period of time. This helps in capitalizing on the surplus of the buyers by the company as well. The placement of the ad is important, as the company needs to have a better knowledge regarding the time when the customers can be able to view it. This will help in increasing the chances of purchasing the products that the company wants to sell in the market place (Tapp and Spotswood 2013).

The ‘Find Your Greatness’ advertising campaign

Promoting the ad is b=very important, as it will help in increasing the activities of marketing in a proper manner. The use of aggressive and comprehensive tools of marketing will result in spreading awareness among the customers with the intention of spreading the information that the company wants. The use of social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter has enabled the company in spreading the information regarding the message that the advertisements want to convey to the target audience. The right kind of promotional activities helped the company in enjoying the coverage so that the strategy of spreading awareness among the customers can be fulfilled (Londhe 2014).

The major strength of the ad campaign is that it will help in putting across the message that the company wants to the target audience so that the marketing strategies adopted by them can be effective in nature. The use of the innovative strategies will help the company in gaining the attention of the customers so that it can result in increasing the level of sales. The use of a better creative team has helped the company in providing the ads in a creative manner so that it can appeal to the target audience regarding the products that they want to advertise. The company has a good base of capital that has allowed them in developing new and creative advertisements than their rival companies (Parente and Strausbaugh-Hutchinson 2014).

The weakness of the ad campaign is that the inflow of revenue is highly subjected to the rate of fluctuation that is present in the economy. The sudden depression in the economy may result in the loss of the company, as the campaign will not help in increasing its sales volume. This may also result in heavy expenditure on the ad campaign whereas the return on the investment will be very less. Another major weakness is that the barrier to entry in the market is comparatively low, which increases the chances of high-end competition. The other companies may try to overshadow the campaign of Nike by introducing the same line of products and advertising it with the same idea so that the customers may have an option to switch their brands (Dwerniany and Jewler 2013).

The use of the latest technologies that are present in the internet on a global manner acts as an opportunity for the company so that the ad campaign can be competitive and creative in nature. The use of the internet will also result in increasing the market penetration of the ad as well. The launch of the advertisement campaign was done in the London Olympics so that it can help in gaining the attraction of large number of sports persons who had gathered for the event in the same location. The social media platforms need to be capitalized so that it can help in increasing the level of awareness among the customers (Crawford and Okigbo 2014).

There is an intense level of competition among the sports companies to advertise their products so that better rate of revenue can be earned by them. Another major threat is that the loyalty level of the customers towards a particular brand is low, which results in making innovative advertisements on a constant manner. The com-any also needs to adhere to rules and regulations that are laid down in the countries, which may deviate the ad campaign from the main strategy that the company wants to inform the customers (Berman 2016).

Objectives and strategies of the campaign

The objective of the ad campaign is to find out about ‘find your greatness’ through the SOSTAC Model. The intention behind this campaign is to convey a strong message to motivate and inspire people. The underlying message is to help anyone celebrate their instances of accomplishment and achievement in sports. The ad campaign is aimed to reach the target audience through a series of short commercials on both TV and social media. A situational analysis will be done with the aim of finding out about the current market scenario of Nike and seek for the suitable campaign strategy. The aim is to focus on the tactics and actions taken earlier by the company and find out the new strategies which will be beneficial for the company. The three primary objectives are given below-

• To find out the new strategies by comparing with the existing ones for the effectiveness of the ad campaign
• To find out the target audience and manufacture the products as per customer demand
• To make brilliant ad campaigns in order to appeal to the target audience and create potential customers in the market

For this ad campaign Nike wanted to create a set of videos to showcase the manner in which different kinds of people can seek for greatness and put stress on the message that everyone should struggle to attain whether they are a good athlete or not. This new campaign was simpler than their previous ‘just do it’ campaign and was able to use better and softer tone in their approach. The release of the ad campaign was at the right time when there was hype in the sports market due to London Olympics (Chanavat and Desbordes 2014). The ads were displayed in the social media and the digital channels, which was further supported by the online sites of Nike where the viewers had to sign up and share their opinion. YouTube channel along with other social networking sites was used to give maximum publicity to the ad campaign. The ad campaign motivated the daily person within an individual to achieve something great in his or her own style and receive greatness.  

The tactics of using Olympic Games as the platform for releasing the ad campaign was a good concept adopted by Nike. The company had to pay a large amount of money in order to get associated with the brand of Olympic. This tactics was good for them to find a global platform among the large chunk of people and audience present at the London Olympic Games 2012 (Vigar- Ellis and Hall 2015). It is a good opportunity because there are no other gala events such as the Olympic Games to highlight sports apparel and footwear in front of the customers. However, there are brands who have failed miserably in reaching their target audience despite spending huge amount of money. In that case, Nike was fortunate to spread the message successfully to the target audience by successful release of their ad campaign.     

The action related to this ad campaign was implemented to supersede the rival company Adidas and reach the target market without being a part of the official Olympic partner. The company has motivated people to remove their restrictions and attain their own great moments of accomplishment. They had measured every step of their actions by targeting the normal people and empowering them by making a positive impact. The actions were different from Adidas as they had used the non- athletic people (Childs and Jin 2018).   

Strengths of the campaign

The success of the ad campaign was controlled using different ways such as the increase in the mention of social media, gathering views of the ad videos in You Tube and other social networking sites. For instance, there were 16,020n tweets in the name of Nike in comparison to 9300 tweets for Adidas (Peszko 2016).  

Nike has selected their target audience on a wide range, which is not limited to only sportspersons. The widely diverse target audience belongs to different backgrounds as the campaign was spread worldwide. The campaign had used places and locations from all over the world and the broadcasting was done throughout the world. ‘Find your greatness’ was targeted at the normal people but it was hard to find greatness among random people. Therefore, there was no specific segment in the ad campaign and everyone was considered equal for watching and getting inspiration from the campaign. The audience was targeted to spread emotions through marketing of the Nike products and spread responses to direct international behaviors (Boldt et al. 2016).       

Application of different theories in the context of Nike’s advertising campaign

Nike is famous for its sports ware and accessories. In order to improve the brad image and introduce the product in the in the international market Nike has conducted an advertising campaign, which is known as “Find Your Greatness”. However, social media and digital channels are used to conduct this campaign. In order to understand the success of the advertising media Nike needs to measure the effectiveness of the media.  AIDA model is effective to describe the effect of advertising media (Hassan et al. 2015). In this model A stands for attention, I for interest, D shows desire and A stands for action. Based on these four elements an organization can understand the strength of their advertising media (Buis et al. 2015). In the context of Nike, application of this model will help them to gain attention of the consumers by making creative messages through social media. This can grow interest among the people regarding the product and the campaign of such organization. As a result, the desire will be generated and based on the consumer needs Nike can take proper action plan to lead their campaign towards the success.

Another important model is Dagmar mode, which defines the advertising goal for measured advertising outcome (Chandra and Weinberg 2018). Awareness, comprehension, conviction and action are the four major components of this model. Application of this model will enable Nike to create awareness among the consumers regarding their brand. For this purpose they need to develop creative information on their social media sites. Therefore, comprehension helps the consumers to understand the feature and attribute of the product through the advertising media. On the other hand, Nike needs to convince their customers through their new campaign “Find Your Greatness”. In order to this Nike has delivered in dept product details and its feature, which ensures the consumers that this product is made for them and it can fulfill their needs. After conviction the customers Nike has taken action to implement their advertising campaign successfully. However, by following this model Nike would be able to use their advertising media effectively and give shape the campaign.

Importance of advertising placement and promotion

Means End Theory highlights the consumer decision map, which includes the product attributes to the benefit of the consumers. For an organization it is important to deliver their product attributes properly, through which the consumer can be benefitted (Nguyen et al. 2018). This concept is beneficial for Nike to improve their future ad campaign. By following this concept any organization can understand that product attribute influences the decision-making process of the consumers. Product attributes include price, brand service and other product details. Incorporation of the proper product features into the advertising media could be effective for Nike to lead their campaign towards the success. It is important for the brand to incorporate the product detail in a way, which ensures the benefits of the consumers while purchasing the product. “Find Your Greatness” campaign leads Nike to improve their brand image in the international market. Hence, application of this theory could boost their campaign as well as the effectiveness of the media.

During the time of London Olympics 2012, Nike first launched their advertising campaign with the slogan ‘Find your Greatness.’ The one- minute television advertisement was liked by all and won the hearts of many viewers. In addition to this, the YouTube channel of Nike was also bombarded with several visitors. The advertisement campaign comprised short and minute long videos that featured ‘everyday athletes’ all across the world, including Jamaica, South Africa, China and other countries. According to the media reviews, it became the most popular advertisement campaign and received over one million likes. Moreover, Nike featured sportspersons from all across the world in order to make the campaign successful (Marketing-interactive.com 2018).

Because of this, the campaign expanded and people from all across the world started following it. The campaign was aired over twenty- five countries, which coincided the opening ceremony of Olympics. In addition to this, the media reviews also revealed that the campaign was being designed by keeping in mind the Olympic fever and get over their rivalry with Adidas. However, Nike was not being chosen as 2012 London Olympics’ official sponsor. Their first preference was Adidas. With creative campaigns and advertisements, Nike managed to become the official sponsor of Olympics (Elliott 2016).

The ‘Find your Greatness’ advertisement campaign of Nike helped them in differentiating themselves from their competitors. Moreover, they featured professional athletes in their advertisements, which was the unique selling proposition of the brand. In addition to this, they aimed to examine that their idea of ‘greatness’ and ‘achievements’ was not really reserved for some specific personalities. However, ‘greatness’ or ‘achievement’ is something which everyone is capable of. The target audience of Nike coincided with some of the viewers of its competitor, Adidas. Nike tried to separate its target audiences by promoting a powerful message over its official website (Marketing-interactive.com 2018).

In its official website, the company tried to promote its advertising campaign to a huge extent. They tried to inspire the ones, who want to do something in their lives and achieve their moments of greatness in sports. It also stated that the world only focuses on those who are the best of the best. It encapsulated the core message of the advertising campaign. Furthermore, the website stated that not only the championship athletes, but also the amateur athletes can achieve and strive to achieve their own moments of greatness (Vigar-Ellis and Hall 2015).

In addition to this, Nike also tries to deliver hopeful messages to its target audiences and viewers. However, it can be said that the advertisements are not at all parallel to the meanings and sentiments. Media reviews reveal that the company can conduct semiotic analysis for the two advertisements and gain a better understanding regarding the basic elements, structures and other features of them. In addition to this, it is important to keep some steps in mind. These steps involve identification of the signifiers; what is being signified; what meanings the signifiers assign to the given products; who are the target groups and what is the message of the advertisement (Childs and Jin 2018).

References

Berman, M., 2016. The Blueprint for Strategic Advertising: How Critical Thinking Builds Successful Campaigns. Routledge.

Boldt, L.C., Vinayagamoorthy, V., Winder, F., Schnittger, M., Ekran, M., Mukkamala, R.R., Lassen, N.B., Flesch, B., Hussain, A. and Vatrapu, R., 2016, December. Forecasting Nike’s sales using Facebook data. In Big Data (Big Data), 2016 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 2447-2456). IEEE.

Buis, M., Johnsson, A. and Thormann, T., 2015. Fair Trade and its impact on the purchasing process: Using the AIDA model.

Chanavat, N. and Desbordes, M., 2014. Towards the regulation and restriction of ambush marketing? The first truly social and digital mega sports event: Olympic Games, London 2012. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, 15(3), pp.2-11.

Chanavat, N. and Desbordes, M., 2015. The case of the first truly social and digital Olympic Games: London 2012. Routledge Handbook of Sports Marketing, p.195.

Chandra, A. and Weinberg, M., 2018. How Does Advertising Depend on Competition? Evidence from US Brewing. Management Science.

Childs, M. and Jin, B., 2018. Nike: An Innovation Journey. In Product Innovation in the Global Fashion Industry (pp. 79-111). Palgrave Pivot, New York.

Crawford, E.C. and Okigbo, C.C., 2014. Strategic communication campaigns. In Strategic urban health communication (pp. 11-23). Springer, New York, NY.

Drewniany, B.L. and Jewler, A.J., 2013. Creative strategy in advertising. Cengage Learning.

Elliott, C., 2016. 10 Find Your Greatness: Responsibility, Policy, and the Problem of Childhood Obesity. Obesity in Canada: Critical Perspectives, p.272.

Grady, J., 2017. Analyzing Rule 40’s Restrictions on Using Athletes in Olympic Sponsorship at Rio 2016. ESLJ, 15, p.1.

Hassan, S., Nadzim, S.Z.A. and Shiratuddin, N., 2015. Strategic use of social media for small business based on the AIDA model. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 172, pp.262-269.

Huang, R. and Sarigöllü, E., 2014. How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors (pp. 113-132). Springer, New York, NY.

Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of’marketingmix’and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.95.

Londhe, B.R., 2014. Marketing mix for next generation marketing. Procedia Economics and Finance, 11, pp.335-340.

Marketing-interactive.com (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.marketing-interactive.com/carat-asia-pacific-names-new-ceo-as-sean-obriens-remit-changes/ [Accessed 10 Jul. 2018].

Nguyen, C., Romaniuk, J., Faulkner, M. and Cohen, J., 2018. Are two brands better than one? Investigating the effects of co-branding in advertising on audience memory. Marketing Letters, 29(1), pp.37-48.

Parente, D. and Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, K., 2014. Advertising campaign strategy: A guide to marketing communication plans. Cengage Learning.

Peszko, K., 2016. Multiscreening as a way of reaching a consumer–idea and possibilities. Jagiellonian Journal of Management, 1(4), pp.339-351.

Tapp, A. and Spotswood, F., 2013. From the 4Ps to COM-SM: reconfiguring the social marketing mix. Journal of Social Marketing, 3(3), pp.206-222.

Vigar-Ellis, D. and Hall, D.E., 2015. The changing nature of ambush marketing: a content analysis of ambush marketing commentary of the London Olympics. Journal of Contemporary Management, 12(1), pp.948-973.