Well, this is a first for me, which is to say I haven’t done a follow-up, or a Part II, to an article before, but one commenter who responded to my earlier piece about Nike being dropped from the S&P 100 merits this.
In the earlier piece, S&P 100 Drops Nike: Formerly Disruptive Shoe Company Is Now Out of Fashion, I covered the business and marketing reasons why Nike is no longer a Wall Street superstar.
In a sign of the changing times, the S&P 100 is delisting Nike. To reiterate, the S&P 100 – not the S&P 500 – is delisting Nike, which is a reflection of the company’s poor performance on Wall Street and elsewhere. If you want to buy a share of the stock these days, it’s floundering around $38 to $40 per share, which is as low as it’s been in about 12 years. The delisting will take effect Sept. 21, I wrote.
In the article, I covered everything from aging celebrity endorsers to the rise of Gen Z to the growing obsolescence of the Nike approach to traditional advertising.
A few of you took me to task for not blaming Colin Kaepernick’s 2017 sideline, attention-seeking tantrums and Nike’s support for him at the time. What I didn’t say in the original Nike piece, but I did write in other articles, is that after Kaepernick did that and my hometown team embarrassed itself in support of him, I couldn’t watch an NFL game for six years, let alone wear something with the Nike logo on it. So, I’m fully aware of the Kaepernick issue and Nike’s contribution to it.
That said, while those of us on the right universally rejected him, not enough people in the marketplace did so to the extent that it caused a decline in sales. It didn't. The Kaepernick fiasco did not have a material impact on company sales. You may have thrown out all your Nike apparel, but the company had four of its best years ever after the Kaepernick thing. And that wasn’t its only woke misstep as far as you and I are concerned.
Several readers correctly pointed out that Nike’s never-ending support of everything woke led to its decline. But given Nike’s targeted demographics, the trite phrase, “Go woke, go broke,” doesn’t completely apply here. It wasn't wokeness in general that got Nike into branding trouble; it was the company's embrace of one particular woke pillar, however, that may have hastened the brand's undoing. I missed that in the earlier piece.
A VIP commenter on my earlier Nike article said it best. Anon-fqqb wrote: “by embracing Wokeness they embraced the victim-mentality, loser-mentality segment of society. the purple haired, nose ring, wall-to-wall tats demographic is what now actually defines their brand when the rest of us see a Nike logo. no one that is not a woke weirdo wants to embrace a brand that signifies Woke weirdos.”
Remember when Nike created ads like this?
What do you notice? You notice an all-out celebration of winning, of defeating the opponent, of raw drive, of merit. The word “fierceness” comes to mind. A no-excuses approach to achievement. You notice a complete absence of “equity,” or losing and “acceptance.”
For "old Nike," there was no such thing as "good enough." It was only about being better than your opponent, whether that opponent was another athlete or a mountain.
This is the Kaepernick ad that started Nike down the path of marketing softness.
Nike is running straight into the political fray as the company turns to Colin Kaepernick for the 30th anniversary of its "Just Do It" ad campaign https://t.co/E7ndI63GTJ pic.twitter.com/3j4GWrHGpL
— CNN (@CNN) September 4, 2018
At the superficial level, the ad was consistent with prior campaigns, and it tried to appeal to your sense of higher purpose and the greater good, but it deviated from the brand’s foundational theme in one major way: It celebrated losing. To be sure, it never said that, but if you substitute one word in the ad copy, you’ll see what I mean.
The original line: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
Now look at it this way, and you’ll see the strategic shift the company made: "Believe in something. Even if it means losing everything.”
Prior to Kaepernick, Nike did celebrate sacrifice, but only in the spirit of doing what you need to do to win and achieve. “Sacrifice” was never an end unto itself until Kaepernick came along.
The Kaepernick ad and so many other Nike ads that came later totally dropped the notion that you have to try to be a winner. All you have to do is try to be you, which is a very low bar. The Kaepernick Nike ad told you that it’s OK to lose if all you do is believe you’re right.
That was a fork in the road from a marketing standpoint for Nike, which then produced ads like this one targeting women. Notice that it’s not really about winning at all. There are lots of nice visuals and production values here, but if you pay attention to the copy, it’s all a buildup just to tell women to embrace the crazy, literally.
Of course, the ad implies that women shouldn’t care what other people think, but even at that, it deviates from the company’s longstanding emphasis on winning and achievement.
As Anon-fqqb posted, “by embracing Wokeness they embraced the victim-mentality.” That’s the entire premise of this Nike ad.
If that’s not proof enough, this Nike spot is peak victimhood.
And so, to follow up on the Nike article Part I, I think there was one thing we all missed, but which Anon-fqqb nailed, and it's that Nike’s branding decline can likely be traced back to when it started accepting something other than winning or achieving your absolute best. When the name “Nike” was no longer synonymous with “winning,” people who want to win started to look elsewhere for inspiration and for athletic apparel, shoes, and equipment.
All of this is not the sole reason Nike’s being delisted from the S&P 100, but to dismiss it would be to miss an important part of the company’s story. If Nike wants to be a winner again, it needs to get back to celebrating merit, achievement, winning, and the human spirit that drives people to give their all to win. Nothing else will do.
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