Nike is a company that continues to be an inspiration… not only to me personally but to other marketers who only dream about establishing the level of emotional connection that Nike was able to establish with athletes, fans and the community. Let’s look at how they achieve that.
Nike strives “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world”. Inspire, be better, give them something new – Nike has always been a very social company, their business is built on the relationships and conversations with athletes. And Nike’s fans demand connection. That hasn’t changed. But how they connect is evolving.
Connecting through a cause:
When Lance Armstrong announced his comeback last year, Nike invited LiveStrong community (community Lance loves and supports) to send Lance messages of inspiration, support and hope. They then created a robot that chalk-panted these customized messages on the road Lance was cycling at Tour de France which he could see as he went by. By connecting the community to their inspirational leader Nike helped grow the LiveStrong Facebook community by 95% and YouTube community by 54%. (If you would like to see how the ‘chalkbot’ works check it out here)
Connecting through sport moments:
During the 2010 Olympics Nike ran a campaign encouraging Canadian hockey players to force their fate in pursuit of Gold. They created a video with a message “Destiny doesn’t decide if we win, we do”. Check out this video, I love it! Talk about connecting with your customers on emotional level… Doesn’t get any better than this!
In order to keep the conversation going throughout the Olympics, the team found a young and very passionate Canadian video blogger – Steve Dangle – and gave him a platform to share his passion for the game and provide insights into the team as they marched on to win Gold.
What’s more they also invited people to create their own inspirational ads through Facebook ( just choose a player and add your message). They then projected ads on a massive building in the heart of Vancouver, BC. And that’s not all… they took pictures of the projections and sent them to the people who created them so that they could share with their friends. Does it get any more social than that?
Connecting through stories:
Nike created the Most Valuable Puppets series featuring Kobe and Lebron. One character in the series though really caught audiences attention – Lil’ Desmond – a kid whose voice and personality of an obsessed fan really resonated with audiences. So Nike leveraged Lil’ Dez to expand the story and the characters. They created Twitter handle for him and let him be the voice of a fan. Lil ‘Dez’s Twitter feed was syndicated on ESPN providing real-time commentary on Kobe and Lebron throughout the NBA season.
Check out this MVPuppets video with Lil’ Dez in it. Make sure you watch till the very end – you will love it.
Connecting through events:
NIKE LIVE with KOBE was an event designed to celebrate Kobe and the release of his new signature shoe.
Nike created an action-packed entertaining event at the Montalban theater in LA – but it could only hold 800 people. So Nike decided to promote the event via Twitter and invited fans to submit questions to Kobe that would be asked during the event. They then broadcasted the event live on the Facebook page and allowed fans to ask questions and converse throughout the event. In the end, Nike extended the event participation to 40,000 people. Again, does it get more social than this?
Connecting through product:
Nike asked themselves: “How can product be the start of a conversation rather than the end of it?” Their answer: by adding a sensor to a shoe that tracks how fast and far you’re going and then creating NikeRunning community online which encourages conversations among runners, allows you to set your mile goals, see who ran the fastest/longest, track your progress real-time, and allow you to share your physical experience and achievements with your social networks to help members motivate and support each other. Brilliant! But that’s not all. It also allowed Nike mobilize over 850,000 runners to run on one day when they organized a Human Race 10K the purpose of which was to get a community of runners to run on the same day for a cause. 1 million people participated in the Human Race that day.
For the launch of Nike’s latest Just Do Itcampaign, the company tapped into an existing fan community on Facebook and invited them to help launch the campaign. That community is now over 1 million strong and a platform for athletes to continue to inspire one another. They just recently asked the fans to share their Just Do It stories via Twitter and ran a stream of all the #JustDoIt twitter messages on the Facebook page.
But Nike is not resting on its laurels. This is a company that is changing and adapting as an organization to further bring the social element into their marketing. What does this mean for them? Here is what Ean Lensch, Nike’s Brand Connections Director, says: “There is a need for us to be expert conversationalists, but these conversations, we believe, have to be mutually beneficial. Making everything a social experience is crucial. And we need to redefine success.” And then he quoted Simon Pestridge…
“We don’t do advertising any more. We just do cool stuff… It sounds a bit wanky, but that’s just the way it is. Advertising is all about achieving awareness, and we no longer need awareness. We need to become a part of people’s lives and digital allows us to do that.”
Nike is the company that sets an example in all aspects of true human connections and the company that continues to inspire me as a person and as a marketer… every day.