Nike "Find Your Greatness" Campaign 2012

This section of the Nike blog deals with the promotion aspect of the marketing mix, considering the brands marketing strategy during the London 2012 Olympics. 

Nike focus on emotional branding in their advertising. The basics of their advertisements are usually the story of the underdog becoming the hero. Usually showing someone’s humble origins and how they fight their own demons and struggles to be successful and become the hero. Nike advertise in this way to make a form of non-personal communication seem more personal and make the customer believe the brand understands the thoughts and feelings ordinary people have every day when considering their exercise regime. This can be highlighted in Nike’s Find Your Greatness campaign during the 2012 London Olympics shown below where they focus on selling a type of beneficial lifestyle rather than a specific product. It also supports their mission statement of inspiring every person with a body to become a great athlete. The aim of this promotion was to increase brand awareness through positive promotional activity.

“Greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We are all capable of it. All of us.” 
- Tom Hardy, in Nike's "Find Your Greatness" ad

‘The Jogger’ advert was Nike’s most successful advert during this campaign. An advertising campaign involves designing a series of advertisements and placing them in various advertising media to reach a particular target audience (Ferrell, Dibb and Simkin, 2016). This advert was spread through social media and online first, where Nike have the opportunity to reach an extremely large audience worldwide. It was first featured on YouTube home page and then shown on through the more conventional method of advertising, TV advertising. Ferrell, Dibb and Simkin (2016) states that the internet is becoming an increasingly large part of the promotional mix as it can be interactive, updated or modified quickly and can target a specific group of people therefore digital marketing is becoming more popular due to its efficiency in marketing. This advert was then shown in 25 different countries and has become one of Nike’s most iconic adverts. The advert features an overweight young boy on an empty road running early in the morning. It is very simplistic but the commentary by Tom Hardy triggers an empathetic response from it's viewers. We can all relate to this young boy’s desire and determination to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle. This creates a positive brand attitude and develops the consumers view of the brand, making them more likely to purchase their products as they will connect the Nike products with the positive, uplifting message from their advert.  

Although Adidas was chosen to be the global sponsor for the London Olympics 2012, Nike’s campaign featured young relatable kids striving to reach their goals and personal best and strengthened Nike’s values that everyone can be a successful athlete. This separated Nike from Adidas advertising strategy of using professional athletes using Adidas products. Even though Adidas would have had more publicity through the sponsorship, Nike's clever emotional advertising campaign was more memorable even though the frequency and reach of their adverts may be smaller than their competitor's. 

Nike have used institutional advertising, which Ferrell, Dibb and Simkin define as a type of advertising that promotes organisational ideas or political issues. In this ad campaign Nike would be promoting their ideas on personal goals and fitness while also addressing the growing issue of obesity. Their target market for this campaign seems to be mainly at kids as their adverts featured kids practicing sports however this may inspire parents or adults by provoking an emotional response of what they could have achieved if they were as determined to "find their greatness". 

“A powerful message to inspire anyone who wants to achieve their own moment of greatness in sport, launched just as the world focuses on the best of the best.” Nike Official Website

With a successful advertising campaign for the brand evaluated, the next blog post will go on to analyse the consumers experience and relationship with the brand.

References

Ferrell, O.C., Dibb, S. and Simkin, L. (2016) Marketing: Concepts and strategies. London, United Kingdom: Cengage Learning EMEA.