“HOW IT FEELS LIKE WORKING FOR NIKE?’’

Nike project (Sellers interviews)| AD Discovery and Creativity Course| AD&PR Lab

Nowadays, digital marketing, advertising and the social media corner the market. Through high competition, great challenges and many opportunities, creativity and innovative marketing ideas could improve the world. In the purposes of our course “Ad Discovery and Creativity Lab”, we, as students of AD&PR Lab of Panteion University, research the latest trends in advertising and communication as well as work on and create some really interesting projects as brand ambassadors of PR digital media company.

In this post you will learn about the Interviews that we took from the sellers who had working for the NIKE stores and the Insights that we came to.

Firstly, let me introduce you Mary Kalafata!

Mary is 27 years old and she is graduate of science of physical education and sports. She is working as a fitness instructor and meanwhile she is attending physiotherapy workshop. In parallel with her studies she used to work for 3 years in a store of Nike as a seller. As Mary told us, it was really nice experience to work for a such popular brand acquiring great knowledge and skills.

Mary revealed us that working there was too demanding since you should know excellent the technology of the shoes and the clothes as well as the history of the brand. After work she often had to study and prepare herself for the next day. However, it was more than that. You should have and develop skills such as multitasking, communicative ability, handling customers’ behaviors, cooperative spirit, patience and discipline. Though the conditions weren’t too strict. In fact, they were not as much organized as they should be. There was a severe lack of staff and there was not meritocracy at all. Furthermore, Mary was disappointed from the salary. The payment was short against the hard work. When we asked Mary to describe her feelings for working for Nike, she told us that the brand itself and its history inspires her. Although, her belief is that everyone counts more on the name of the brand than all the rests.

Now, let’s meet Fotis Foros.

Fotis is 30 years old and he is a personal trainer. He was working for Nike as a seller and then as a supervisor for almost 10 years. As Fotis told us working for Nike is like school. You learn how to collaborate with a lot and different people, to be patient, to be able to coordinate and to develop your emotional intelligence. Fotis said that after a while when someone enter in the store he was able to understand what he would like to shop without even speaking. He was really pleasant from his experience and he had a very good teamwork. He had the feeling of satisfaction and the burden of big responsibility too, as Nike represents one of the biggest brands in the whole world. All customers who were coming into the store were really excited either buying or just browsing. It is obvious how much people love this brand, he said. Fotis also supports that was not an easy thing working there because the brand itself due to high prestige has very demanding costumers and huge footfall (almost 2000 costumers per day). Also, every store should be reached its personal quota for the month. Fotis decided to leave his job and move on because there were no opportunities for advancement. It was extremely hard to get a chance to work into the company. He feels very lucky for living that experience and he claims that he would do it again and again. The brand is so big that literally talks by itself.

INSIGHTS

The insights that we came to from both workers are the following:

• Working for Nike is too demanding
• Necessary to have and develop many abilities and skills
• Get hired staff that is involved with sports
• Not satisfactory salary
• Not much organized as you expected
• No opportunities for advancement
• Feeling of satisfaction and big responsibility as well for representing one of the biggest brands worldwide
• It is more the brand that counts than anything else
• Nike “means” inspiration

Team: ted m, Antonis Katsis , Eva Fouska, Antzela Golikai, Alexia Stavropoulou

Professor: Betty Tsakarestou