If you are a fan of sports or at least embrace the theme during major events, you may have noticed that Nike has been present in most of them — Olympics, World Cup, etc — without being an official sponsor. How crazy is that? I mean, if we take the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Adidas has paid a huge amount of money as an official sponsor and, despite its “regular” brand exposition during matches and in official materials, has been sharing people’s attention with Nike all the time. Again, how crazy is that? You have the event in your hands and one of your major competitors can´t stop getting a huge visibility.

How do they do that? I know it’s complicated to point out some random actions and campaigns because it involves a long term strategy of enhancing brand perceptions. It’s kind of automatic: we think about sports, we think about Nike. But, we do have some stuff to think about if we consider the things they are doing during this particular event (Brazil’s World Cup). Here are FIVE reasons they are winning the battle against all the other sports brands:

1. Product Design Strategy

A great starting point would be their products. During the 2012 Olympics, they developed very shinning neon shoes — the color is called “Volt” — used by more than 400 athletes and caught all the attention during the games. As this Kellog School specialist points out: “Nike ‘s move was really clever. They used marketing assets that belonged to them alone, and those assets gave them a pretty unique opportunity to take advantage of the Olympic rules” (find the article here). Some can argue that it was easy since many of the most important athletes are part of what they call “Team Nike” but we can’t minimize the smart side of this strategy that has been proved as very effective for the brand.

And guess what? They've done it again. Yes, for this World Cup they used the same strategy with a little twist. They developed a totally new kind of cleats. Called “Magista” this boot was designed to fit like socks and while it has the latest technology, their color palette is again very attractive. Using their team of sponsored football players, the brand has created a Magista effect that is catching all the attention when you watch any match of this World Cup. Combining it with all the campaigns made for the launch of this specific model, when you turn your TV on, all you see is Nike.

2. Their Awesome Campaign

What do you do when you have some of the best football players in your cast? Easy, just take all of them and make an outstanding film. Is it that easy? We've seen a lot of brands using celebrities as their main (and only) resource to engage customers but only a few of them can produce really interesting things that have the power to resonate in culture. Nike is part of this selected group of the ones who create interesting stuff. Haven’t you watched their ad yet? Take a time before we continue:

“Risk Everything” is the main concept that was first launched with this ad where normal guys become major stars in their amateur football game. This was aired in the major TV networks here in Brazil and created a huge buzz. Every guy you met in the streets was talking about this ad. Crazy! Was it enough? No, not for Nike.

About a month after the release of the first “Risk Everything” ad, they came up with a secret weapon: an incredible animated movie about how their cast of football superstars would save football. The story´s about the emergence of “clones” that were built to transform football in a very mechanical thing. So, the major stars lost their role in their teams since robots were programmed to execute every single movement their originals ones could do. WOW! Just WOW! It´s a serious piece of art. Watch it now if you haven´t:

This film popularity sparked like a rocket within a worldwide audience and specifically in Brazil it became very popular. It was aired in our major TV networks and supported by digital media. As you can imagine, they couldn't air the whole film in every media channel due its length but they were also very smart choosing, for example, movie theaters to present the film in its fullest. Don’t even need to mention the important role digital media played in this campaign since they have YouTube as its main channel.

Is that all?

NO! They also used the main characters of the film in developments of the campaign like a Q&A session with Zlatan Ibrahimović (the character) called #AskZlatan. Alright, that was not exclusively made for a Brazilian audience but anyway, it´s awesome!

3. The Brazilian Shirt

It will sound kind of obvious but they make the Brazilian shirt and it gives them a huge advantage. It´s simple! They produce the symbol of the team that represents the nation hosting the World Cup. In a normal condition, it would be natural that the brand in this position would make a lot of it. But Nike is doing better!

Instead of the traditional shirts — the ones used for training and matches — they created special versions that expresses a lot of different cultural movements. They took Pedro Lourenço — one of the most important fashion designers in Brazil — to collaborate with them and create a super style version of the national team jersey.

They also used all of their influence within different sports like surf and skateboard to create special editions of the shirt and the national team´s kit.

All of these special actions resonated very well in each world. The Pedro Lourenço shirt made fashion bloggers and “fashionistas” go wild. Skateboarders and surfers finally found something “useful” for them and the football world spread through different sports and groups of people.

4. Not Only Football

One thing I enjoy about Nike is that they understand that each athlete has their own thing. I mean, runners like to run, skateboarders like X Games and so on. They will not try to make you get involved with football related things in order to feel part of the event. Does it make sense? Let me try to explain using an example. Imagine that you really like to run. Running has been a really important part of your life and when such a huge thing — like the World Cup — happens, you feel like you want be part of it but at the same time don’t get so comfortable since football is not a well explored universe for you. What would a brand that covers both football and running do?

They found a very smart way to link both worlds. They call it “Run The Game” and as its name suggests, it´s a game that you pick a country to run for. People from all over the world make their choice and every kilometer ran by these supporters go to a ranking and the country that gets the longest distance is the winner. Brilliant! They “gamified” running using the World Cup as a theme. Awesome! Just awesome!

5. They Matter in Culture

The host country and its host cities play a very important role within events like Olympics and World Cup. We say here that the World Cup atmosphere is everywhere. Thousands of tourists are in the streets and people are celebrating all the time. Sounds like a nice opportunity for brands to create stuff that matters in this cultural moment, doesn't it? Well, it´s already sounding redundant but Nike has also done it very well.

They created a project called “Casa Fenomenal” (which means Phenomenal House) in Rio de Janeiro and it´s a true expression of all the culture around an event like the World Cup. It´s like a museum of their main products and their history but they also host awesome concerts with very local artists. The result? Apart from becoming a touristic attraction for people from all over the world, they carefully pick the coolest kids in town and invite them to go in their main events. It generates a buzz that easily spreads across different platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and reach a whole audience that for any reason is not only looking for football related content. It´s a sum of nice artists, super famous athletes from various sports and a super nice experience. Well done Nike!

**BONUS**

As a bonus, I had to highlight two important things: the golden shoes for Neymar and the fact that they chose David Luiz to star their campaign. This is what we call consistency. They designed a special pair of boots for the major star of the host nation team that not only shines in the field but also generated buzz across most of our media platforms. And… they picked David Luiz who happened to become one of the main characters of this World Cup and also a role model of sportsmanship.