Globally well-known sportswear giant is top of its game right now. As a leading sports apparel brand, Nike’s huge success isn’t a surprise. Each one of the Nike campaigns tells a different story and takes the audience to another journey.
Nike’s digital marketing strategy is supported by brilliantly effective ads. The company is not only selling products, but they are also selling emotional benefits of the products. In short, they are selling the aspiration. That’s why the brand shows the promoted product to the audience only in few of their campaigns. They appeal to the emotions instead.
Building meaningful stories and tagline
Nike campaigns are really effective. They focus on creating meaningful stories to build a loyal fan base. Nike induces emotion in the customer through “emotional branding”. Carefully crafted ads aim to evoke particular feelings and make the Nike products more meaningful through the eyes of the customers.
Nike tells its stories with a traditional narrative of a hero who overcomes hardships, fights with an enemy and leads to glory at the end. In most cases, the enemy says to the hero that “You can’t”, but the tagline comes to help and tells “Just Do It”.
Distribution strategy
It’s important to have your customers talking about your brand. Nike creates exciting experiences that people would talk and share each other. Nike has subsidiaries like Converse, Jordan, and Hurley. Different brands help them to grow.
Distribution strategy is another key component of Nike’s digital marketing strategy. Through various channels such as retailers, e-commerce sites, resellers and supermarkets, Nike distribute its products worldwide.
Targeting strategy and mission
As it is not only a footwear brand and present in sports equipment, clothing, and many others, Nike uses different and separate targeting strategies and campaigns to remain at the top. The brand always uses cutting-edge technologies like hyperadapt.
Their mission is “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world” and as we all know their tagline is “Just Do It”. They have a strong product portfolio in various interrelated business segments to retain their customers and provide bundle products to them.
Financial statistics
Nike’s digital marketing strategy has brought victory. As of 2018, Nike is the most valuable global apparel brand with a brand value of 28 billion dollars. They held the largest market share with 2.8 percent in 2017. The company ‘s financial record is also strong. In the last consecutive 4 years, Nike generated over 30 billion dollars in revenue.
As we mentioned above, highly creative and emotional campaigns are playing a determent role in Nike’s digital marketing strategy.
We have chosen 5 of the brilliant digital marketing campaigns of Nike from the latest years to show you how the brand attained success:
-
Nike Air Jordan and Facebook Messenger Bot Collaboration
Our first selection of Nike campaigns is about the collaboration between Nike Air Jordan and Facebook Messenger bot. For creating this campaign, Nike teams up with conversational AI platform Snaps.
The project is delivering content from Air Jordan blog, Jordan.com, and Jordan News weekly to the users. It divides into 3 categories: Air Jordan, shop and watch.
Messenger bots enable the two-way conversations and give people a unique opportunity to connect with Nike’s Air Jordan. The bot is generating open rates of 87%, far outpacing the typical 15% to 20% it sees from emails.
Users can customize the notification time. The bot generates subtle responses to specific phrases, and it can lead readers to the Collection website with an external link then help them to turn back to Messenger again.
-
Nike: Reactland
To promote the launch of its cutting-edge new running shoes, Epic React, Nike developed a rich digital marketing campaign. The campaign hosted channels including mobile, social media, video and website.
The most striking element of the campaign is its immersive Reactland initiative that transports users into a virtual video game by creating their 8-bit avatars. With this project, users can experience the brand’s latest sole cushioning technology.
The campaign created by Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai combines social media engagement, immersive experiential marketing and gamification.
-
Nike Unlimited Stadium
Have you ever race with your own shadow? “Nike Unlimited Stadium” made it happen. Nike has constructed the world’s first full-sized LED racing track in Manila, Philippines.
The runners can compete with their LED avatars with the help of a sensor attached to their shoe in 200 meters long LunarEpic running shoes’ sole shaped track. This great project of Nike conceptualized by BBH Singapore and digitally promoted by Birdman.
-
Nike: The Wonder Woman of Vogue
We continue our Nike campaigns with the LGBTQ rights supportive ad. The company has collaborated with a transgender Vogue artist and ballroom dancer Leiomy Moldonado for this short film to promote the #BeTrue collection and also to celebrate the Pride Month. The video is produced by Public Record and directed by Daisy Zhou.
The project celebrates voguing, – a dance move previously performed by queer and transgender people in the 1960’s Harlem. The clip includes a narration by artist Precious Angel Ramirez.
Moreover, the 60 seconds long ad pays homage to New York’s underground “ballroom scenery” – a community that was created by impoverished Black and Latino LGBTQ youth as a place to safely express themselves and perform their dance moves.
-
Nike: Equality
Nike has launched 90-second spot from Wieden + Kennedy Portland. The ad encourages athletes to respect and to be fair to each other in and off the field. The ad directed by Melina Matsoukas features stars from the sports world like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Serena Williams, Megan Rapinoe, Dalilah Muhammad, Gabby Douglas.
The soundtrack “A Change Is Gonna Come” is from Alicia Keys. The initiative is centered on using Nike’s voice and the power of sport to inspire people to take action.
We have shared 5 creative digital campaigns of Nike in this post. If you’d like to explore more, have a look at Nike digital marketing and social media campaigns for inspiration.
Written by: