A Brand Analysis.
INTRODUCTION
Nike Inc. is an american multinational company that provides sporting goods, ranging from sports clothes to equipment and accesories. They are one of the largest sports goods providers around the globe. Nike outsources the actual manufacturing of their goods and instead focus their time and efforts on the branding, marketing and the design of their products. In Naomi Kleins book (1999) No logo she describes the brand over product philosophy and how Nike has adopted that idealogy by outsourcing their manufacturing and focusing on branding.
COBRANDING
Nike cobranded with Apple- both companies are the superstars and giants in their field and these two companies noticed that there are aligned interests between both their target markets and took advantage of that. Nike targets those who are interested in sport and in their physical well being. They took that extra step of identifying their interests and realised when people run or exercise they listen to music and they are also interested in keeping track of their physical well being, therefore the cobranding with apple allowed them to create products that fit that situation perfectly: 1) Nike developed products under the name Nike+ and Apple created a chip that can be inserted in the Nike+ shoes. Once they do so, the chip and their ipod are synced and everything that the chip records is sent to the device. 2) Apple also offers a “Nike Sports Music� section on iTunes and this is a list of songs that famous athletes have chosen as songs that help them to exercise.
CAUSE BRANDING
Screenshot from the official Nike website
Nike also uses cause branding to appeal to customers and emphasise the idea of corporate responsibility and how they as an organisation give back to the world and inspire global change. An example of cause branding that Nike did was a campaign they carried out called Lace up, Save lives. To raise awareness of this campaign, Nike made the three most famous european leagues go red, in the sense that they introduced a new series of red balls which were used in the leagues in 2010. They introduced a pair of red laces and invited people to buy them and according to the Nike official website it states that 100 percent of the profits are split between The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tubercolosis and Malaria ( they are a program that provide medicine and treatment for those living with HIV) and football based community initiatives that deliver education and understanding about HIV prevention. This is an example of both cobranding and cause branding, because they parntered with The Global Fund and it was also for a good cause.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Nike has constantly proven to the world that they are experts when it comes to positive customer experiences and finding different and innovative ways to make their customers interact with them and the store itself. They have focused on interactive display in both advertisements around the world and in their stores. 1) Interactive displays in Selfridges London: Nike created an interactive display/ advertisements in which the advertisement in itself would interact with the person who walks by and would change according to where they stand, where they go or how they move. Some required people to do certain things, such as jump and others would just change as any person walked by. This definately stands out and allows people to pass by and have fun and have a positive experience: exactly what Nike wants.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 2) Store Design In the Nike stores themselves they have height metres: but not any height metre, right next to the number they have added names of athletes that are the same height. This allows customers to stand and see which athlete they are like in terms of height. Not only does this allow customers to enjoy the shopping process more but it also makes them feel similar to powerful athletes: and that is a great feeling, especially when one is shopping for sports clothes. It empowers you and makes you feel like one of them and this emotion is definately something that Nike tries to trigger in its target audience. They also have something similar to this, but for shoe size, where they have the shoe size of famous athletes drawn on the floor and customers can put their feet and compare their shoe size.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE “Before the product was the end of the consumer experience... now it is the starting point” - Stefan Olander, Nike’s VP of digitial sport
BRAND ARCHITECTURE Nike has a large portfolio and a lot of subbrands such as: NikeFootball NikeSoccer NikeBaseball NikeID Nike+ NikeLab NikeJordan Because they have so many subcategories, it is very important for Nike to be able to show all of these products in an organized manner to make it easier for customers to find what they are looking for. Nike aims to present their store as a bunch of “small stores” in which there is a section for each and one can easily nav� igate through the store.
THE NAME: NIKE The type of naming strategy that Nike used is METAPHOR. In greek mythology, Nike is the goddess of victory and sucess and is also referred to as “the winged godess of victory�. This is a metaphor for how if people use their products they will be successful and victorious like Nike the goddess. This creates connotations of users being unstoppable and undefeatable and this kind of empowerement is what Nike wants to spark in its target audience.
TAGLINE: JUST DO IT. The tagline for Nike is “Just do it” and this kind of tagline is an IMPERATIVE tagline because it commands action. The just do it campaign was launched in 1988 and it featured amateurs and athletes talking about their experiences of working out and exercising and this inspired many people to the point where people start contacting Nike and telling them stories of how they “just did it”- whether its quitting dead end jobs or finally signing up in a gym. It is very straight foward and simple, but I believe that is what makes it extremely powerful. We always find ourselves busy with such day to day tasks, like due work or daily responsibilities such as school and work and we always postpone doing the important things that truly matter, such as doing what we love and following our passion, and this phrase “just do it” emphasises the idea of stop waiting around, stop waiting for that perfect moment, because in reality, there is no perfect moment, and you just need to do it. It evokes courage and bravery and inspires people to finally getting around to do things, and the beautiful part is that it is not only limited to finally exercising or doing sports- its just general and can apply to anything. Famous designer Paul Rand once said “Design is so simple, that’s why its so complicated” and I believe that Nike follows that so striclty in everything they do.
BRANDMARK
As we can see from the diagram above, Nike’s brandmark from 1972 till 1985 included the name and the swoosh, meaning that through out this time Nike’s brandmark was an EMBLEM, but after 1985 they decided to go with the swoosh on it’s own without “Nike”, making Nike’s current brandmark an abstract or symbolic mark. THE SWOOSH The famous Nike Swoosh was designed by a college student named Carolyn Davidson only for 35 dollars. She also came up with the name Nike. Contrary to popular belief the swoosh is not a check mark, because check marks usually have harsher angles whereas the swoosh is circular. There are a lot of submeanings to the swoosh and the first one is the use of onomatopea of the word “swoosh”- it creates an idea of an athlete or someone really fast passing by you or “swooshing” past you, or even a basketball player slam dunking or getting the ball in the net perfectly. It represents motion and speed and relates back to the idea of Nike (The goddess of victory) because she had wings and the actual shape of it is supposed to imitate her wings. Using the elements of form, Carolyn managed to create movement in a very simple shape and used content to add meaning and metaphors to the swoosh.
LOOK AND FEEL COLOR Nike does not have a certain color palette that they strictly follow and their logo can be found in a variety of colors, but that just goes to show how powerful the swoosh in itself is. There is no need for a certain signature color that one needs to identify to know that the swoosh means Nike, although the most popular color seems to be the orange or red one. In this case, these colors symbolise passion and energy- exactly what one needs to be feeling when they want to work out or even shop for work out clothes or acessories. TYPOGRAPHY The font that Nike uses for the word “Nike” and their tagline “Just do it.” is a sans serif font “futura”- it is based on geometric shapes and is meant to imply forwardness and effectiveness. Although the Nike logo uses Futura, it does slant the letters more than the original font. The fact that it is slanted adds movement to the name and emphasises the idea of speed and being
NIKE
Futura Condensed black
The Nike logo
BRAND PERSONALITY In order to get a deeper grasping of Nike’s brand we must answer two questions If the brand was a person, what kind of personality traits would it have? Nike would have the following personality traits: Rebellious, assertive and brave. A follow up question would be, what is the brand personality and which kind of archetype does Nike fall into?
1)REBEL
Nike falls into the REBEL archetype because a lot of its promotional campaigns rotate around the idea of being rebellious, breaking cultural and social norms and not caring about what others think. They focus a lot on women empowerment and motivate women to follow their passion and do sports regardless of what society says and how it views women who play sports.
BRAND PERSONALITY 2)DREAMER Nike also falls into the DREAMER archetype, because it is always trying to drive its customers to follow their dreams and never give up. A perfect archetype for Nike would be a rebellious dreamer, who has big dreams that others do not believe in.