Where Amazing [Marketing] Happens: An Analysis of the NBA’s Marketing Strategy

As an avid sports fan, the NBA has fascinated me with its large, diverse fan base. As a result, I will analyze the NBA’s marketing strategy so that I can better understand the league’s long-term success. Since the appointment of David Stern as NBA Commissioner in 1984, the NBA has seen tremendous growth in popularity. While I do acknowledge the NBA has somewhat stagnated in North American growth, the league continues to expand in other key markets, such as China, Latin America, and Great Britain. Thus, I would like to learn more about how the NBA has successfully marketed itself to maintain its status as a leading entertainment option.

Specifically, I would like to focus on how the NBA uses the four p’s of marketing to create its success. By examining the four p’s, I will be able to gain insight into ticket pricing (price), nba franchising (place), promotion development (promotion), and experiential marketing (product). Moreover, for the product aspect of the 4 p’s, I will be focusing extensively on experiential marketing rather than pure product marketing. Based on my experience in the sports industry, marketing sports does not focus on the benefits of the game itself; instead, sport marketing requires a focus on the sports experience.


While I performed preliminary research, a few questions came to mind.

1. What differentiates the marketing strategy of the NBA from other failed
professional American sports leagues?
2. How does the NBA market itself compared to international basketball leagues?
3. How has the NBA adapted its marketing strategy to a changing audience?
4. Does the NBA’s marketing strategy change due to the economic recession?
5. What does the NBA do to shape its image through marketing?
6. Who is really the NBA’s target market? Demographics? Psychographics?


After completing preliminary research, I’m excited about learning more about this topic. This topic excites me because I aim to work in the sports industry. In particular, I want to work in the league office headquarters for the NBA in New York City. By researching the NBA’s marketing strategy, I feel like I will be better prepared to make a smoother transition into my dream job. Despite my interest, I am slightly concerned that it will be difficult to find articles specifically related to the NBA’s marketing strategy. I may be forced to search for references to the NBA’s marketing strategy within other articles.

If I am able to find enough relevant information, I feel like this analysis will allow me to better understand many Customer Insight topics. Specifically, it will give me a better understanding of experiential marketing because of the way sports are marketed. Also, I will learn how the NBA segments its target customers so that it can most effectively market to its large fan base. Additionally, I will gain insight into the type of customer I, as a sports marketer, will encounter in my future. Lastly, I will gain insight into how consumers make purchasing decisions. Specifically, how they choose to spend their time and money in one entertainment option—the NBA—over competing entertainment options.

In relation to segmentation, I found an article titled “Walk This Way” by ESPN the magazine writer Chris Broussard. The article discusses how the NBA cringed at the thought of players wearing skull caps and baggy shorts because of its association to the “streets.” Now, the NBA has learned to embrace its connection to hip-hop because of how mainstream hip-hip culture has become part of modern America. Since the hip-hop culture is now entrenched in modern America, the NBA risked detachment from its young (generation y) fans if it did not embrace this new culture. Therefore, the NBA now has a bigger connection to hip-hop culture than ever before.

Based on this article, I was able to gain insight into how the NBA markets to a particular segment. This article focuses on how the NBA is using hip-hop music to reach the younger generation of basketball fans. For example, the NBA now allows hip-hop music to be loudly blasted in all NBA arenas so long as the content is appropriate. While the young generation is not the NBA’s only fan base, this articles shows how the NBA adapts its experience to a particular segment. Upon further development of my top paper, I would like better understand other segments the NBA targets and how they adapt their marketing programs to that segment.

I Am Witness...To The Importance of Those Three Little Words: "Just Do It"

Nike Co-founder Bill Bowerman once said, “If you have a body, you are an athlete.” This statement embodies the ideas and goals of the world-renowned “Just Do It” campaign. The “Just Do It” campaign began in 1988 as an effort to overcome decreasing market share to Nike’s competitors, such as Reebok and Adidas. At the time, Nike took a gamble by developing a marketing campaign that aimed to express Nike products as more than just shoes, but rather as athletic fashion statement. Nike aimed to promote the experience that when you buy Nike’s you are not just getting a top of line athletic shoe, you are joining the in-crowd that lives an active lifestyle. This new lifestyle was active, hip, and trendy; three qualities Nike believed were very desirable to their consumers.

This call for an active lifestyle comes from the type of marketing known as strategic experience modeling, in particular act marketing. In a book titled Experiental Marketing: How to Get Your Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act, and Relate to Your Company and Brand by Bernd H. Schmitt, the author argues about the importance of marketing the experience of your brand to your consumers. Nike excellently challenged their customers to not only use their products, but also to create a new lifestyle. This type of challenge to action is known as act marketing. It encouraged potential customers to perceive the need to go out and exercise(Check Out The Original Just Do It Commercial). Whether your exercise of choice was walking in the mall for 30 minutes or running a marathon, Nike didn’t care. The company just wanted to cash in on the fitness craze of the 1980s by getting everyone to do some form of exercise. By empowering individuals to “just do it” and start exercising, Nike was implicitly improving its bottom-line. Nike knew if they were able sell this “Just Do It” concept, consumers would need athletic shoes and equipment to exercise. As the motivation for people’s workout, Nike was confident that their shoes would be the customers’ product of choice.

Before the “Just Do It” campaign, Nike like most athletic shoe companies at the time only focused on the benefits of the shoe. Through the “Just Do It” campaign, Nike was able to say all they needed to about the Nike product without ever discussing the show or even saying the Nike name. This lack of direct selling is the beauty of experiential marketing. As discussed extensively in marketing literature, people do not like to feel like they are being sold to. Rather, people desire to feel like buying a product provides them something more. For example, L’Oreal Paris’ hair treatment is more than just another brand of hair dye. Through their celebrity spokespersons, L’Oreal Paris has created an image of the woman you can become by using their product. Therefore, countless women will only use L’Oreal Paris products because it represents the lifestyle they live or presently desire.

Like Loreal, Nike also uses opinion leaders to create an image of a certain experience you can have with Nike. In one of the original 12 “Just Do It” commercials, Nike relied on two-sport superstar Bo Jackson to give the image that you can be an athletic superstar by using Nikes (See Original Bo Jackson Commercial). Even today, Nike is known for their innovative marketing programs that make you feel like an athlete and they inspire you to go out and “Just Do It.”

If Nike did not rely on multiple senses of Schmitt’s strategic experience marketing. It can be argued that it would not be as successful as it is today. As a former athlete and avid runner, I understand that Nike’s athletic shoes are usually not the best quality product in the market. Yet, Nike is the leader of athletic shoe revenues in the world. If Nikes aren’t the best shoes, but yet they sell at a tremendous rate, there must be something extra about Nike (besides the extra mark-up they are now able to charge because of their brand equity). The something extra is the experience, the fashion, and the coolness that both star athletes and average individuals feel when they put on their Nikes. And to think, this Nike experience all started because some marketing executives understood the power of a hybrid approach to experiential marketing. “Just Do It!”