How storytelling is on the coronary heart of the Nike model
Walk down a city street and it will only take a few minutes – maybe seconds – to spot a Nike Swoosh. Over its nearly 50-year lifespan, the logomark has grown into an ubiquitous addition to our visual landscape that is so easy to identify that half of that time it stood on its own with no typography to support the Nike brand.
The brand had a relatively humble origins: it was created in 1971 by Portland State University graphic design student Carolyn Davidson as a freelance project for Phil Knight (who taught accounting at the school until 1969). The Swoosh first appeared on a pair of soccer cleats called The Nike that same year and on the first line of Nike cleats made by Blue Ribbon Sports in 1972. The company Knight and Bill Bowerman was originally a co-founder of the sales of sports shoes from Japan. It wasn't until 1978, when Blue Ribbon Sports ventured further into developing its own designs, that the company changed its name to Nike, Inc. It's impossible to imagine that Davidson – even in her wildest dreams – had an idea that their work would become one Day have so much meaning to so many people around the world.
In the book The Brand Gap, published in 2002, the author Marty Neumeier explains that the idea of a brand is little more than a collective interplay of people's gut feelings with regard to a product, a service or a company. “If enough people have the same gut feeling,” he writes, “you can say that a company has a brand. In other words, a brand is not what you say you are. It is what they say "Companies who excel at marketing understand that everything they do – every product, every communication, every conceivable point of contact with a customer or prospect, and even their company policies and practices – all contribute to that perception. While at Nike Has long been the case, brand building success relies on the ability to foster connection through emotional storytelling.
Above: Air Max advertisement, c1987-95; Above: Brand development by Carolyn Davidson, 1970s. All images: © Nike, Inc.
Phil Knight, 1970s
Original Nike shoe box, around 1971
The teams at Nike have long understood that harnessing emotions for storytelling is a far more effective branding strategy than distorting features and benefits. "Why do people marry – or do something?" Phil Knight faced the Harvard Business Review in 1992. “Because of emotional ties. This is what builds long-term relationships with consumers and that is what our campaigns are about. Our advertising tries to connect consumers to the Nike brand through the emotions of exercise and fitness. We show competition, determination, achievement, fun, and even the spiritual rewards of participating in these activities. "
While Nike initially viewed itself as production-oriented and success or failure relied on designing and making innovative products, by the time of the Knight interview mentioned above, the company had been going through an incredibly consistent change. "We have come to the conclusion that Nike is a marketing company," Knight said, "and the product is our primary marketing tool. What I mean is that marketing holds the whole organization together. The design elements and functional characteristics of the product itself are just part of the whole marketing process. "This new perspective was critical to the company's evolution into one of the most recognizable global brands. More notably, the shift was largely due to the launch of one of the most momentous designs in Nike history: Air Max.
In hindsight, this may seem difficult to understand, but by the mid-1980s, Nike was in the midst of an identity crisis. The company's technical, performance-driven performance was outperformed by more casual designs and aerobic footwear from the competition. Nike's attempts to branch out had failed the mark. There were layoffs and the future was by no means certain. Tinker Hatfield – a pole vaulting master turned architect and shoe designer – kept coming back to an idea that had occurred to him in Paris while looking at Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers & # 39; Center Pompidou.
The campaign series The Ten: Nike x Virgil Abloh Collection, 2017
Spreads from the Phaidon Nike book. Photo: Sean Davidson
Hatfield was not only impressed by the juxtaposition of the alien modernist structure with the classic Parisian Beaux-Arts buildings in Paris (and the fact that, whether you loved them or hated them, you couldn't help but notice), but also from the philosophical basis of architects. If you could turn a building upside down, why not a pair of shoes? "That is what Visible Air produced," says the designer. "You could see what (the Air Max) made different, what made it work better and therefore made it more interesting and more open to storytelling."
When it came time to launch the Air Max, the organization knew that it would take more than great design to overcome the headwinds the company was facing. For the television campaign, the company turned to long-term agency partner Wieden + Kennedy based in Portland, Oregon. Co-directors Paula Greif and Peter Kagan, who helped shape the appearance of the burgeoning MTV network, were hired to create a place that was more mood than narrative.
The lively 60-second commercial cut a grainy Super-8 film by Nike stars Michael Jordan and John McEnroe with footage of amateur athletes, including Nike employees, who participated in various sporting events – repeatedly interrupted by a clip of the Air Max compression Air unit under the weight of a runner's kick. Above all, the fuzzy and overdriven recording of Revolution by the Beatles boomed continuously throughout the commercial. As Knight explained, "Not only did we want to communicate a radical departure from shoes, we wanted to communicate a revolution in the way Americans perceived fitness, exercise, and wellness."
Phaidon Nike book. Photo: Sean Davidson
Contrary to everything that had come before, the advertising hit a chord. It may be hard to believe now, but at the time, original versions of classic songs by famous bands were rarely used in commercials – let alone a hit by the most famous band of all time. Although Nike negotiated the use of the song with Capitol Records and Yoko Ono – who was responsible for the estate of her late husband John Lennon – the remaining Beatles, through their publisher Apple Records, refused to use it and sued the company for $ 15 million . "We got sued and that made it all cooler because Yoko Ono had to fight with the rest of the Beatles," recalls Hatfield. “The whole thing came out and was like a rocket ship. And Nike really hasn't stopped growing since then. "
This is an excerpt from Nike: Better is Temporary by Sam Grawe, published by Phaidon, £ 69.95; phaidon.com