NIKE Advertisement Strategies PDF

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NIKE ADVERTISEMENT STRATEGIES When we think about Nike’s marketing strategy, our minds bring us directly to think about the slogan “Just do it” or the logo called “Swoosh”. Nike is one of the most successful and recognised companies worldwide and to discover how Nike is able to be successful in advertisement and how the company is able to be eighteenth on the rank of the most valuable companies in the world (Forbes, 2015) is a hard challenge that everybody would like to accept. Nike promotes its products through different channels of communication and it is able to sell through the prominent effort of its merchandise which creates overall positive brand awareness. Nike uses different ways to advertise and promote its brand. The main medium used by Nike to advertise are through television, magazines, outdoors and the Internet. The television is the most powerful way where Nike advertise its products with great and attractive adverts. And thanks to the wide coverage of the television, it allows Nike to reach every house all over the world. The magazines advertisement is not as strong as the television one but it can target sport-interested people, business people or, in general, people who love reading. The outdoors advertisement is referred especially to road billboards or billboards on vehicles like buses. As for the Internet, it a very strategic and convenient way to advertise because of the advantage of the low cost of the advertisement and the different ways to advertise from videos and images to social media campaigns.

Advertisement strategies Nike uses different methods of advertising its products and, we can recognize the most importants in the positioning, pull strategy through the Nike logo, the push strategy, the emotional branding, the use of social medias and the digital sport. Positioning strategy The positioning is ‘the process whereby the brand is perceived by the consumer/stakeholder to be differentiated from the competition, to occupy a particular space in the market, and will achieve the business goals’ (Fill, 2013, p. 190). As for Nike, the company positions itself as an athletic-wear company that is built around the ideal that everyone is as athlete. Nike has always made sure to be the primary brand in any kind of athletic competition or activity. Especially for Nike running, it has always put an effort on being the primary brand in running market as the company’s main and most famous products are the shoes. Nike pull strategy The pull strategy is probably the most important strategy used by Nike to establish a connection between the brand and potential customers. The pull strategy is intended to influence the customer. The aim of this strategy is to attract people and let them come to you. One of Nike’s best pull strategy methods is the logo known as “swoosh”. When people see the “swoosh,” they recognize the the brand at first sight. It is an advantage when a company is so popular so that, the company do not even need to have their name shown in every campaign. It just need the logo of the company.

Nike push strategy After the pull strategy, Nike uses also the benefits of the push strategy. This strategy uses channel of communications to “push” the message through the channel. It includes the use of commercials, print advertisements and obviously the presence worldwide of Nike retail stores. To reach a larger audience, Nike uses a mix of those three types of advertisement. The company is able to push the message of every advert to the customer by putting the logo and the name of the company in each advert. Also, Nike does not use only Nike stores to sell its products but it uses other different retail stores where Nike’s products can be found and it is a big benefit for the company because it allows the customers to associate the brand with the product they are buying. Emotional branding Emotional branding is a type of marketing technique that uses an appeal to a customer’s needs, aspirations, or emotional state in order to build a particular brand (Ramnathjk, 2015). Emotional branding can be very powerful when consumers feel a close attachment to the brand. When we consider emotional branding, Nike can be recognised one of the best. It is because, Nike rely on a technique called “the Story of Heroism”. Very few can resist the appeal that a Hero story brings. It shows the struggle that goes on every people’s head: the battle between laziness and health. Social media strategy Like the majority of large sport companies, Nike has learned the benefits of a presence on social media. The company uses its social media accounts to connect directly with their customers and they are one of the most active brands online. Facebook Nike has separate Facebook pages for each of its product categories. The different sport pages are updated daily with pictures and videos of Nike products, often featuring the athletes sponsored by the company as well as Nike products. The Nike running page has currently 5,7 million followers Twitter Nike has separate Twitter accounts for its subsidiary brands and for each page, the focus is largely directed to responding to @mentions. This means that a large portion of the activity on Nike’s Twitter accounts is made up of responses to individual customer queries, allowing consumers to connect directly with a corporation in a way that would have never been possible in the past. Nike’s staff answers questions about products, stock information, and orders. The Nike running page has currently 768K followers. Instagram

Nike’s Instagram is the most popular brand account currently on the site, reaching an incredible amount of 28.9 million followers. Using both videos and photos, Nike presents a favourable image of its brand on its main account and its related accounts (like Nike running which has actually 3.3 million followers). The company really understands how Instagram can be influential on people’s head and what its users want to see. Nike’s accounts are daily filled with amazing pictures of people using their products, shot in a natural way, not like catalogue photos where the photos are often modified. Pinterest At the start, Nike’s Pinterest page was only dedicated to its Nike women products. But now, there are twenty boards containing their line of shoes and accessories. Pinterest is a great way for companies to display their company values and culture, but Nike has chosen to use it more as a product catalogue than a creative marketing tool. Google+ Nike’s Google+ platform is very considered by customers but is mostly used as a place to leave reviews and feedbacks. Currently, Nike has 4,3 million followers and 45,9 million views and the page is always updated with information about new products and new technologies. Nike Digital Sport strategy Nike Digital Sport is a very young division at Nike. It was launched only in 2010 (the year when the company spent $800 million on non-traditional advertising) and it focuses on developing technologies and devices that enable users to track their personal fitness statistics. The most well-known component of Digital Sport is the Nike+ running sensor, which was developed with Apple. The product has at least six million users. Nike+ tracks athletic performance through a wireless connection. Data is stored on the Nike website and users can post and share their workout information via Twitter and Facebook.

Nike running advertisement campaigns examples Since the beginning, Nike has always created great and amazing marketing campaigns. As for running, these are the most famous and known campaigns made by Nike in the last years. Nike grid In 2010, the company launched Nike Grid, a campaign which turned London into a huge virtual game board. Runners were challenged to reach different checkpoints around the city to earn points, creating a competition among the running community. There were even virtual badges on offer for speed, endurance and stamina. The campaign ran on Facebook between May and October 2010, and it was one of the first Nike’s attempts at merging real world sport performance with digital and social marketing. Free running In order to promote its new Free Running shoes, Nike launched a social campaign that challenged runners to measure their fastest time over two miles using Nike+. To add a sense of fun to the competition, the company tied it into an original karaoke song, with the idea

being that a strong runner should be able to sing while running. The song, ‘I would run to you,’ could be downloaded by using the app “Shazam” on a two minute short video that was released as part of the campaign. Overall, the participants made a total of 30,177 runs, which equals the halfway distance of the world. Catch the flash This campaign was made to promote a new reflective running jacket. Nike ran an event called ‘Catch the flash’ in Vienna, Austria. 50 ‘flash runners’ ran around the city at night wearing the jackets and people could win the amount of €10,000 by taking photos of as many of the runners as possible. But it wasn’t just open to people in Vienna – each runner was tracked via GPS so users could chase them through an online game. Nike+ users had an advantage as they were given a faster virtual character to try and track down the real runners online. Members of the Austrian national football team also played online and posted pictures on Facebook. On average the online gamers spent 24 minutes on the microsite, however there is no information on how many people took part in real life.

References Moon, G. and CoSchedule (2014) “The secret Nike marketing strategy that you should know, Content Marketing”. CoSchedule. Available at: http://coschedule.com/blog/nike-marketing-strategy (Accessed: 11 November 2015). Forbes (2015) “The world’s most valuable brands”. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/powerfulbrands/list/#tab:rank (Accessed: 11 November 2015). Ramnath Jk. (2015) “Nike marketing strategy - how Nike does it”. Available at: http://www.ramnathjk.com/advertising/nike-marketing-strategy-how-nike-does-it (Accessed: 12 November 2015). Moth, D. (2013) “10 awesome digital marketing campaigns from Nike” . Econsultancy. Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/63129-10-awesome-digital-marketing-campaigns-from-nike/ (Accessed: 09 November 2015).

Fill, C. (2013) Marketing communications: Brands, experiences and participation. 6th edn. United Kingdom: Pearson Education....