Question

Describe Nike's broad digital marketing strategy. It should relate to overall business and marketing goals. Be as specific as possible.

Answer 1

For any person who has watched, played or examine exercises in the final 30-plus years, it could be practically inconceivable to not learn about Nike and the influence the organization has had on the athletic shoes and sports clothing market. With iconic, world-type athletes because the face of their manufacturer, Nike quickly performed world success in the 1980s. They adopted that with the superb simply Do It campaign, which challenged purchasers to use Nike products to obtain their possess athletic greatness. In these days, the manufacturer continues to reinforce their brand by way of a dedication to digital and social media advertising and they're as soon as again leaving the competitors in the dirt.

In the establishing, Nike hit on a extremely good branding procedure: Have the sector elite athletes outline your manufacturer. And no athlete will get extra credit for outlining the Nike brand than NBA legend Michael Jordan. The partnership was once so robust, in fact, that Nike truely helped define Jordan basketball profession, as they created the physical games worlds first signature shoe, the Air Jordan. Verify out this basic Nike advert, offering Spike Lee and Michael Jordan.

And the Jordan-Nike relationship is still going strong. In line with Forbes.Com, the Jordan company, a division of Nike that includes Jordan signature shoe line and athletic-attire line, accounted for the vast majority of Michael Jordan $80 million corporate-partnership profits in 2012. For extra on the innovative Jordan-Nike partnership as good as the value of co-branding, be certain to learn this text with the aid of my Britton colleague Steve Penhollow: Co-manufacturers Are a companys nice buddy.

today, Nike continues to companion with world-type athletes, equivalent to tennis superstar Rafael Nadal and NBA megastar LeBron James. However within the publish-Jordan era, this method has proven its limitations, as evidenced with the aid of Nikes tarnished relationships with American bike owner Lance Armstrong and PGA golf phenom Tiger Woods. Armstrong was once caught in a blood-doping scandal and stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. Woods used to be hounded by means of severe scrutiny over marital infidelity and different poor publicity involving his private lifestyles. Nike speedily reduce ties with Armstrong, and they had been pressured to reposition their partnership with Woods. However the injury to their company had been performed.

Nike commenced experiencing a quandary many brands would love to have. They had grown so big that it used to be fitting difficult for them to remain cutting-edge with a technique that had served them so well. After all, there is only one Michael Jordan. Happily for Nike, they had already been rethinking their branding approaches.

As early as 1996, Nike was experimenting with digital marketing (they launched Nike.Com that 12 months for the summer time Olympics in Atlanta). The web offered a brand new frontier, and with their founded global appeal, Nike used to be good-placed to take capabilities of this rising digital platform. By way of 2005, Nike was relocating into social media, joining MySpace and YouTube. Taking knowledge of web customers affinity for sharing content, Nike started posting movies to YouTube, together with the now-famous Ronaldinho crossbar video, one of the vital first movies to move viral 1 . The video points Ronaldinho, a global-famend soccer megastar, pulling off an strong trick shot. Nevertheless it's naturally now not usual promoting. It doesn't sell a distinct product. It sells the company. And it's executed via free, shareable digital content. Nike was once making their company available to a modern-day, plugged-in global viewers. And from there, they simply obtained better on the game.

In 2010, Nike fairly kicked their digital advertising and marketing into excessive equipment, with their Nike+ strolling app, which makes use of GPS technology to track users exercise data. And it doesn't just provide dry data. There are a quantity of little touches inside the app that particularly tell you Nike listened to suggestions from athletes about how they teach. For example, there's a countdown before you start so that you could put your device in its holder and start strolling before the application begins. There may be additionally a function where, at the end of your run, a Nike athlete, similar to Tim Tebow or Rafael Nadal, provides you with an atta boy for finishing a exercise or setting a private fine 2. The app integrates with Nike.Com as good as facebook and Twitter, permitting customers to publish and share their exercise expertise. It has very nearly created Nike's own social community.

In his article How Nike Is Killing It in Social Media advertising and marketing, John Cashman of Digital Firefly advertising describes the vigour of Nike+. [It] enables you to monitor your activity throughout the day, both most often or with exercise-certain functions. Their wager is that by way of owning the info and supplying services to you, your company loyalty will broaden, and you are going to be extra likely to purchase from Nike than yet another manufacturer. Nike has realized that the purchase of a Nike product isn't the tip of the advertising cycle, however the opening, [as] they may be able to offer a patron a large form of merchandise and offerings tailor-made to character wants.

And Nike is opening to look spectacular results, each in the sheer number of users (up to now, over 7 million members of the Nike+ community three) and in earnings. In step with the brand-consultancy firm Interbrand, The [Nike] manufacturer back to progress in the past 12 months [2013], with earnings increasing throughout each category and vicinity, up 16 percentage to USD $24.1 billion, the highest expense in 15 years. Its a transparent sign that Nike has moved beyond conventional category boundaries toward developing a real lifestyle company.

With their savvy, state-of-the-art transition into digital and social media marketing, it absolutely seems that the Nike brand is again and better than ever and that can't be good news for the competition. Nike's revival can definitely instruct us a factor or two about how the high-quality manufacturers live on and prosper. Success may also be fleeting with out a method that allows for you to continually self-assess your brand, enabling you to innovate and push the boundaries with the aid of by no means fitting complacent along with your success. And also you must be inclined to evolve, utilizing all of the tools at your disposal to attain an capabilities.