Nikes Risk Everything Campaign - Essay Example

nike’s “risk everything” campaign al Affiliation) nike’s “risk everything” campaign Introduction Nike is a giant American sportswear company that deals with footwear as well as other sports garments. Since its foundation, Nike used strategies that were conventional in the promotion of its products. During that time, the Nike personnel were overwhelming supporters of the company’s products, as they participated wholesomely in the advertising activities of the company. Surprisingly, Nike did not employ the services of any advertising agency, until later in the year 1976. The participation of Nike in active advertising was prompted by the increasing competition from similar companies, including their perennial rivals, Adidas. Given the decision to do commercial advertising, Nike first ventured in printing advertisements that appeared in major dailies in the United States. The company also invested in magazine advertisements. Before the year 1982, Nike put more focus on sponsorships as well as the trending celebrity endorsements. Since that period, the celebrity advertisement has revolutionized, with many corporate entities embracing the need to collaborate with celebrities in a bid to convince more customers to use their products (Cronin, 2004). It was in the same year that Nike hired the services of Wieden + Kennedy, an advertising agency that has since then had strong ties with this giant sportswear company. It is with the help of the partnership with Wieden that Nike begun airing advertisements across television channels in the United States. Television advertising was a boost for the image of the company, as many of the elite group had access to television. Television advertisements helped the company to emphasize more on the technical superiority of its products, therefore positioning the company as a brand for aspiring and serious athletes across various sporting disciplines. In addition to highlighting their product superiority, Nike ventured into advertising their fashion accessories across the young customers, promoting their merchandise across schools and other sporting institutions (Wernick, 1991). The activities of the Nike Company in advertising played a major role in the internationalization of the company. Over the past three decades, Nike has grown to various overseas sporting leagues, with the company being a major corporate figure that sponsors major athletes in the sporting world. This growth in revenue as well as the involvement in multinational sporting markets defines Nike as a global leader in the sporting market. Soccer is no exception. However, the authority of Nike in the soccer industry is not as dominant as it is, in other prominent sporting activities. Nike has never been a major contributor to the soccer market, mainly because of the long-term existent differences on the company’s indecision between focusing solely on soccer and pursuing the interests of the other vast sporting markets. Interestingly, Nike’s interest in the soccer market began growing in the 1994 FIFA World Cup that was hosted in the company’s mother country, the United States. By this time, the connection of soccer to Nike’s rival, Adidas, was immense. The world soccer governing body had signed several contracts with Adidas, prompting Nike to invest more in the largest sport in the world in a bid to have a share of the big contracts. Fast-forward to the year 2014, Nike has a massive 17% market share of the global sports market, with Adidas in second with 12%. In soccer alone, Adidas and Nike collectively dominate the market, selling approximately 70% of the merchandise used in the sport. In the World Cup 2014, Adidas entered the tournament as the leading brand in global football, leading Nike with approximately a 0.5 billion-dollar margin in merchandise sales. “Risk Everything campaign” As expected, Wieden + Kennedy came into partnership with Nike to create a sleek advertisement that defined the state of Nike in the soccer market ahead of the global soccer showdown of 2014. This advertisement campaign spanned in various media including radio, print media, out of home promotions and the largest media- the social media. This advert was tailored specifically for the Brazil 2014 FIFA World Cup, and it relied majorly on the major soccer personalities to emphasize the theme of the campaign. The main theme of the advert was “risk everything”, an emphasis on taking every chance that life offers to succeed in outshining rivals. This campaign stresses the need for risk taking, and the impact that the risk takers have in carrying the national hopes at the FIFA World Cup 2014. The concept of the advert, as depicted by Wieden, visualizes reputable players feeling the intensity of the heated competition, but still fighting for victory and glory, before suddenly arriving at a point that seemingly turns the outlook of world football. Taking the risk comes in when an amateur is given the opportunity to take a penalty kick on behalf of a star-studded team, challenging the prospects of perfect game play. “Risk Everything” uses the sports’ celebrities, Portuguese football star, Cristiano Ronaldo, England’s Wayne Rooney and Brazilian Neymar. This advertisement emphasizes on the pressures that the star soccer players encounter in the event of representing their countries at the FIFA World Cup. Neymar, the Brazilian, wearing the prestigious number ten jersey is struggling to fulfill the dreams of his county’s fanatics. At the same time, Wayne Rooney is depicted as displaying fake skepticism in every place he goes. Cristiano, on the other hand, is in the midst of his fans, depicting the idea that the Portuguese hopes are with him. Finally, as the television advert ends, the three superstars match into the soccer field, accompanied by their team members, suiting the campaign’s tagline, “Pressure Shapes Legends” The use of celebrity advertisement is a technique that defines the corporate desire to meet the expectations of the audience, by targeting the biggest contributors to the sport. The target group of any sporting advert is the fans and followers of that sport. By using three different players, the advert covers the emotions of various football fans across the world. Consequently, the choice of social media platform as the major advertisement platform aims to reach a number of people across various countries in multiple languages, because the average people access the internet frequently. The “Risk Everything” campaign registered huge success across the social media front. The company’s sales shot up, with the image of the brand increasing across various countries in Europe, America, and Africa. In the FIFA World Cup 2014, the “Risk Everything” campaign was the best campaign, toppling all the other highest brand viewership of the over forty-five global brands released. Impressively, the campaign registered over 6 billion impressions across both conventional media and social media. In general, both Nike and Adidas succeeded in marketing the interests surrounding the 2014 World Cup. The difference between the two companies is the cost. Nike employed advertisements across the conventional and social media. Nike succeeded in leveraging the event without investing millions of dollars in being the event’s official sponsor. This tactic is the ambush marketing campaign, which leaves the consumers with no ability to clearly distinguish the official sponsors of an event. The “Risk Everything” Campaign depicts Nike as an entity that realizes that the World Cup is more than just football. This marketing strategy celebrates the foundation of soccer as a unifying factor, and emphasizes the story of the World Cup as bravery, patriotism, and courage. The reasoning behind the campaign highlights the idea of marketing the brand beyond the brilliance of sales and revenue. Evidently, as depicted by the campaign, there is no greater risk in any competition than playing it safe. This influences the other customers of the Nike brand across the general sporting field. Customers have the general feeling that their brand is an ambassador of safety within the confines of the physicality that accompanies the nature of any competitive team sport activity. Apart from gaining loyalty from the other athletes, Nike lures them into following the proceedings of the event. However, unlike Nike and their competitors Adidas, many brands are afraid of trying similar risks that involve international marketing strategies. The difference lies in the lessons that Nike employs in the experiences about the rules of engagement. From the “Risk Everything” campaign, Nike illustrates how marketing is a success if the theme is simple. Being a global event, the world cup affects many countries, and the massive campaign has to work across many cultural and linguistic backgrounds, going beyond multiple geographical boundaries (Turow and McAllister, 2009). The ideas of this campaign were aimed at demonstrating the universal diversity that exists across many nations. By giving the notion the notion of risk, the marketers capture the attention of people. Besides, risk is a sentiment that goes beyond the sporting field alone. Instead, it encompasses the everyday life of people. The campaign taps into the basic human emotions and feelings. The use of the emotional attachment is critical in building a memorable event that incorporates the participation of corporate entities in marketing. Nike markets the personal achievements of enigmatic sportspeople. Unlike Nike, Coke celebrates happiness while Mc Donald is reputable for selling fun. In 2010, the “Write the Future” campaign, also by Nike, depicts the truth of the human nature, as athletes are driven by equal promise of success as much as they encounter the fear of failure. Everyone encounters this reality, and it is a special way that the company connects to the athletes. The establishment of connections between the advertisements and the customers allows the company to take the risks in similar ways that it used to deliver the campaign. Nike was free to make experiments and take risks. They used celebrity advertising as well as other athletes from other sporting fields to market the campaign across social media. In the process of ensuring the social media marketing strategy succeeded, Nike strongly required Facebook users to “like” the film before watching it. Effective marketing strategies require the companies to address questions from fans across the grassroots and digital platforms. These actions, as registered by Nike “Risk Everything”, challenged customers to write more about their risks, hence spending a lot of time connecting with the brand. From this point of view, marketers learn that the emotional attachment that Nike enjoys is because of the simplicity of their advertisement themes that are universal in nature (Gabriel and Lang, 1995). One of the major features that Nike employs in its advertisements is storytelling. In words, shared experiences and images, Nike strives to present a story to the target group. The amazing display of storytelling by the “Risk Everything” campaign uses dialogue and careful choice of words to boldly represent the idea of risk taking. This impact resonates with a strong emotional connection to the lovers of football as well as the viewers of the advertisement. Interestingly, all brands that make an impact in global events employ the technique of storytelling to capture the imaginations of viewers. The World Cup is not an exception, as Nike’s choice of employing storytelling worked to the advantage of the company. Through storytelling, the advertisement fulfills the role of informing the target group. After ensuring that the viewers have fundamental knowledge about the topic, the advertisement then focuses on other matters such as originality, creativity, and style. Advertising plays a critical role in ascribing to the consumers the symbolic meaning of goods (Ewen, 1996). The powerful influence that advertisements have on the consumers constitutes a major ideological perception in the culture of consumer preferences. According to Wernick, the discussion of advertisement has reciprocal and dialogic relationship to other cultural institutions that include religion, family, arts, music, and literature. This is the advantage that Nike has against other competitors. Nike’s fluid and interactive advertisements develop a strong cultural bond that shapes the reality of consumers, hence reflecting social reality. Wieden + Kennedy reconcile the communicative ideas that exist between the marketing institutions and the consumers as “cultural intermediaries. These intermediaries generate the symbolic meanings of products, hence providing a critical connection between the cultural based consumption meanings and the marketing institutions. The advertisement agency uses the problems of cultural diversity to derive a solution to the problems. The promotional culture is the society that surrounds the normal life of human beings. Apart from being inescapable, the promotional culture in business is persuasive. In the 21st century, the global culture is capitalist in nature. Capitalism is made up of political and socio economic ideologies that are oriented towards efficiency in production, with the major aim of making profits. The Nike campaign capitalizes on the diversity of the global market, taking into concern the need for expanding football to more than just the game itself. By commoditization, Nike creates a platform for the capitalism. The campaign connects all the components of value and price to the means of profit making. This expounds the point that the key constituent of capitalism, as used in the promotional culture, entails promotion in many forms and shapes of occurrence. According to Wernick, promotion breaks the limits that exist between the packaging, advertising, and design. Furthermore, promotion is applicable to other activities that are not majorly commercial in nature. Nike “Risk Everything” does not focus on selling any specific product, instead it markets the FIFA world Cup 2014, but the commercial aspect comes in with the sportswear of the prominent soccer stars featured in the campaign. In addition to promotion, capitalism has advertisement as a key component of the promotional task, a function that involves publicizing the products being sold in a positive picture. At the back of the Nike campaign, the marketers understand that it is necessary to build a positive picture for purchases to occur. The major merchandise that the company publicized in the campaign was the soccer shirt that were available at all Nike outlets in and out of the event hosting country (Davis, 2013). Under many circumstances, customers get convinced into buying products because of the celebrity attachment, not solely because of the persuasion by the marketer. This campaign, therefore, uses social media to promote the products by capturing the attention and interest of the millions of social media users globally. Conclusion The knowledge of diverse cultures is necessary in creating a universally accepted brand. This knowledge is a critical resource for advertising practitioners and agents, especially in encoding the meaning of advertisements. The planners of the campaign embarked on individual, friends and family experiences and stories in developing the ideas depicted in the campaign. The global ideological advertising structures are embedded in the acquaintance of advertisement agents on the cultural knowledge that meets and satisfies the needs of the global consumers. Consumers too play a critical role in building the campaign, by submitting their opinions to the company. This explains the use of codified knowledge as received by the campaign creating team from the structured systems of larger clients. In conclusion, the campaign explains the efforts of marketers in going into private space in defining their advertisements. The marketers use private information to promote their products. The “Risk Everything” campaign does not directly market products to the consumers, but uses the private social platforms to pass their message, and in a sense drawing the interests of consumers (Miller and Dinan, 2008). References Cronin, A. 2004. Advertising myths. London: Routledge. Davis, A. n.d.. Promotional cultures. Ewen, S. 1996. PR!. New York: Basic Books. Gabriel, Y. and Lang, T. 1995. The unmanageable consumer. London: Sage Publications. Miller, D. and Dinan, W. 2008. A century of spin. London [u.a.]: Pluto Press. Turow, J. and McAllister, M. 2009. The advertising and consumer culture reader. New York: Routledge. Wernick, A. 1991. Promotional culture. London: Sage Publications. Read More