Nike's Emotional Branding Wins Hearts

We are surrounded with so much information today it's a miracle that any messages break through, but Nike's strategy (via Wieden+Kennedy) of creating emotional, empowering ads and large viral pyramids that leverage the Nike brand and message content is one of the most effective emotional branding examples in the marketing world today. Their customer loyalty is astronomical, all thanks to the masterful application of emotional branding and the centuries-old storytelling archetype of Heroism. 

Nike Advertising and Emotional Branding

Nike's brand inspires fervent customer loyalty around the world.  This is primarily because Nike's advertising uses the emotional branding technique of archetypes in its advertising – more specifically, the story of the Hero. It’s an age old tale, a tale of a hero pitted against a great foe, and after a great struggle, emerging triumphant. 

Building Loyalty + The Hero Archetype

Nike's advertising isn’t the only group that uses the Hero archetype to inspire customer loyalty. Many other companies use this emotional branding technique to great effect. In most cases, the foe is external. The most common story of the hero is that of an underdog, a man of humble origins setting out to defeat a greater evil – one far more powerful than he – and, against all odds, emerging triumphant.  As long as there is a clearly identified enemy and a clearly identified hero, the emotional branding can begin. 

Brand Strategy

Nike's advertising takes the common hero story and turns it on its head. Instead of inspiring customer loyalty by singling out an external enemy, it pulls out the stops and focuses on an internal foe – our laziness. Nike knows just how often we battle with our lazy side. Every morning when that alarm goes off and it’s still totally dark outside, the battle begins. When we choose how long to run, the battle continues. This is how Nike's marketing uses emotional marketing to inspire customer loyalty. They know that while some people may identify with an external foe, all people identify with an internal one.

Nike's strategy resonates because laziness is a universal foe and someone we can all hate, the "consumer is the brand hero". In one way or another, we are all the hero of our own story.  Nike's marketing has long since identified that feeling – and used it to inspire timeless customer loyalty.  They succeed by showing people how to dream bigger and live better. Help them to care more, enable them to do great things and inspire them to be the hero of their story.  Just watch the video below...

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♔ NIKE Basketball lets fans 'Unlock the Black Mamba' using Twitter (by R/GA)

Early in 1984, Nike was a struggling shoe company who needed a way to revitalize and reinvent themselves in order to appeal to segment of the market other then running shoes.  Around the same time, rookie player Michael Jordan saw a golden opportunity in Nike's offer to create a new line of shoes called "Air Jordans." At that time, there was not a tremendous impact from a shoe endorsement, and few companies were willing to risk so much of their marketing budget to bet on one athlete to promote their products.  But we all know how that turned out.  Nike ended up owning Basketball.  So, no one then was likely surprised to see Nike throw their weight behind Tiger Woods to amplify Nike’s Golf products. 

So what next along this line of endorsement?  Presumably, with new energy needed in Basketball, Nike has now attached the brand to Kobe Bryant a.k.a. “The Black Mamba” (named appropriately after the fastest snake in the world (capable of moving at up to 5.4 meters per second 16–20 km/h or 10–12 mph). 

Nike Basketball and R/GA have teamed up to emulate his transformation digitally through a website experience that changes the superstar from Kobe to Mamba through tweets.  As Kobe’s tweets accumulate the dark serpent inside him gradually grows until the beast is unleashed.

The best part?  When the site reaches “Mamba” state (600/hr. required), which is dependent upon a Twitter integration/algorithm that monitors the social conversations and automates the metamorphosis, users will have six-hour access to exclusive Kobe content and be eligible to win limited edition Kobe VI sneakers.

With exclusive incentivized participatory content, viral engagement, peer advocacy and the opportunity to win free sneakers – Nike’s yet again proven to clearly understand their target audience and knows how to drive engagement and activation with through-the-line activities.  With so many activities driving ‘street cred’ - it’s really no wonder Nike reigns supreme in so many sectors.

Think everything is big budget?  Think again.  Check out their "Sneak and Destroy"- Destroyer Burrito Promotion below.  Yet again proving to have their finger directly on the pulse of trending topics.  Kudos.

"The Next Level" – Nike Football's Branded Utility

While Nike had been gaining traction in soccer for years, it had been losing traction with advanced players, who tended to gravitate toward rivals such as Adidas as they moved into more-serious competition. The 2008 European Championships presented just the opportunity to change this perception.  Note:  This campaign is a few years old now, but would work as well today as the day it was launched.  Great ideas are great ideas.  Period.

What resulted was the kind of campaign (by 72andSunny) that proved that it doesn't take a big footprint to do great work that delivers results.  Moreover, this is also exactly what we mean when we talk about branded content and utility - brands creating something that is participatory and useful/valuable to their customers.

The centerpiece of the program was a striking, fast-paced two-minute film directed by Guy Richie, which shows one athlete's first-person view of taking his game to a higher and higher level (first person POV complete with pre-match vomiting and requests for autographs).

Taking the self improvement theme further, an online "boot camp" based on Nike's site provided video-based advanced training and skills regiments. The short film by Guy Ritchie featured superstars such as Cesc Fabregas, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo showing off dazzling skills, but positioned in the context of all the training it takes to get to the next level.

RESULTS
The effort drove 50 million unique visitors to Nike's site in six months, a total that doesn't include external websites such as YouTube, where one posting of Ritchie's film has drawn more than 4.2 million views. Print and outdoor executions focused on specific elite skills, and challenged readers as to whether they had them while also prominently referring them to the Nikefootball.com website.