Nike, Steve Jobs, And a Story to Remember….
This story started when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, when Apple was going through heavy losses because of 11 consecutive years of failure, and people lost their trust in them.
That’s when Steve Jobs came up with a game-changing idea and launched a campaign popularly known as ‘Think Different’, which is one of the best marketing campaigns even today.
In one of his Masterclass Jobs said, “Apple brand has clearly suffered from neglect”. He continued with how they can bring Apple back by not talking about the speed and fees, by not talking about bits and megahertz, and by not talking about how Apple is better than Windows.
And for inspiration, he turned to Nike.
“The best example of all, and one of the greatest jobs of marketing the universe has ever seen is Nike,” Jobs explained. In their ads, they don’t ever talk about their products. What does Nike do? They honor great athletes and they honor great athletics. That’s who they are, that’s what they are about.”
And, Let’s not get started about what Nike did when they lost the title sponsorship to Adidas of the 2012 London Olympics. Even after losing the title sponsorship, when the results came out, there we 9000 tweets associating Adidas with the Olympics, while there were 16,000 tweets associating Nike with it. And to conclude their genius strategy, in a survey after the Olympics, 27% of people said Adidas was the title sponsor of the Olympics, while 37% of people said that Nike was the title sponsor of the London Olympics.
You can checkout the survey here:
And what was the genius strategy of Nike? their “Find Your Greatness” campaign.
- Nike was not allowed to showcase London of UK in their commercials, but they found a loophole and showcased the other 28 locations named as London in different parts of the world.
- Nike was not allowed to hire athletes taking part in Olympics for it’s brand endorsement. So it hired teenagers for commercials and came out with beautiful advertisement. It literally broke the internet. They played with the emotion of inspiration to communicate their idea. Below I am attaching the link of that commercial because I feel words are not enough to describe this masterpiece.
Here’s the campaign video as words are not enough to describe this masterpiece.
Conclusion
Steve Jobs was inspired by Nike and launched the “Think Different” campaign.
Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon (with Yoko Ono), Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog), Frank Lloyd Wright and Pablo Picasso. These are the famous personalities that were on the billboard and TV Ads. Indeed, this ad is strong and motivating, it can draw viewer’s attention from the first second and it remains unique until now.
Enjoy it:
