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!”