Can I Get An Amen? LeBron, Nike’s Contract A Religious Experience 31 Years In The Making
“Just do it” ranked fourth in Ad Age’s “Advertising Century: Top 100 Campaigns” of the 20th century.
The slogan also earned a place as the last chapter of James B. Twitchell’s Twenty Ads That Shook The World.
And according to Ad Week’s David Gianastio, it might be “the last great advertising slogan.” Ever.
That’s why when my advertising professor mentioned the news that the company out of Portland, Oregon had signed LeBron James to a lifetime contract, people started whispering. Two brands had just written their vows until death did them part, and we needed a moment to collect ourselves. That’s the power of Nike.
That’s what makes this news so interesting, though: Nike wasn’t the first to do this. Adidas has lifetime deals with soccer-star David Beckham and oft-injured NBA-star Derrick Rose, while Reebok formed their own lifetime arrangement with retired NBA-star, and likely future hall-of-famer, Allen Iverson. I would expect few non-sports fans to know this information.
The news that Nike signed LeBron for life, however, was a featured story in media outlets across the globe. LeBron and Nike continue to cement themselves as household names, whether that household is in Athens, Georgia or Athens, Greece.
This reason is simple: Nike has transcended from a shoe company into a cult-like religious movement, and LeBron James is its newest prophet.
The Nike brand generates buzz that its competitors dream of creating. There’s a reason why this contract grabs more people’s attention than other apparel company’s lifetime contracts and why that will not change for the foreseeable future. Nike is doing what Nike does better than anyone else on the planet:
Make the hero the product.
In A Little Town Called Chapel Hill: The Jordan Era
During the golden age of advertising, David Ogilvy asserted an opposite notion: advertisers should make the product the hero. Just because Nike has seen success rearranging the syntax of this slogan does not mean Ogilvy’s assertion is weak. In fact, it is a very profound claim, especially because so many brands fail to replicate what Nike makes seem to easy. For a relationship between a brand and its spokesperson, model, or celebrity to work, that endorser’s relationship with the product has to make sense. That’s why the 1950s Van Heusen’s business-professional button down advertisements that featured B-list actor, Ronald Reagan, fell flat for so many Americans; he’s never worked in a cubicle.
Nike, on the other hand, could not have found a better person to sell a product built for cushioning the fall from jumping really, really high than “His Airness,” Michael Jordan. As Twitchell notes, “[It’s] not by happenstance that Jordan’s ads occurred in an area where few of us spend much time — about five feet over our heads.” It’s also not by happenstance that the shoes are at eye-level, just in case we needed reminding of what it is we are supposed to buy. He — and the shoes he wears — are just out of our reach, closer to the heavens than the rest of us. This visual tells us that if we want to escape (a natural human desire), then we need to be like Mike. And Michael wears Nikes.
Since Nike signed Michael Jordan in 1984, he has become the world’s most recognized pitchman of all-time. What’s more, his portfolio of endorsement deals only includes brands that make sense to the “Jordan brand.” Whether someone is buying a Hanes shirt, a Big Mac, or tickets to see Space Jam, what they are really buying is Michael Jordan. He is the hero that has become the product. I cannot put into words what types of brands are “Jordan brands” (or just how powerful the Jordan brand is) better than these two scenes (among many) from Space Jam:
As Jordan — and his popularity — soared in the 90s, Nike reaped their own benefits. Not only were they able to set a marketing plan into motion that would later start a line of golf equipment, cut into Adidas’s stronghold on soccer-related equipment sales, and solidify themselves as the market leader in athletic wear, they had formulated, perfected, and set into place a foolproof marketing algorithm: don’t sell the sneaker; sell Michael. Don’t sell golf clubs; sell Tiger. Don’t sell soccer cleats; sell Ronaldo. Nike is so good at promoting its endorsers that many of the athletes’ first names become all it takes for the average person to identify them. These athletes transform into pop culture zeitgeists of their day.
Perhaps no mononymous athlete is more famous in 2015 than LeBron.
The Second Coming
LeBron James (30) has spent more than half of his life in the national spotlight. His story reads like a movie script where the producer looks up, furrows her brow, and says, “you know, we have to make this somewhat believable.”
James, born to a 16-year-old mother in a declining town deep inside the Rust Belt, never knew his father. His mother struggled to make ends meet, so she let him move in with a local youth-sports coach. In high school, he overcame his situation, kept his nose clean, and became the first sophomore ever selected to USA Today’s All-USA First Team. He then became the first junior to win the boys’ basketball Gatorade National Player of the Year Award. By his junior year, it was already a consensus that whenever James was eligible to declare for the NBA draft, he would be the first pick. None of this compared to what ultimately secured his spot as the rightful heir to “His Airness’s” throne as Nike’s poster boy for the next generation of athletes. On Dec. 12, 2002, St. Vincent — St. Mary High School (Ohio), led by LeBron James, squared off against NBA-factory Oak Hill Academy (Va.) on ESPN2, marking the first time in television history that a high school basketball game was aired across national TV airwaves. Furthermore, Time Warner Cable aired LeBron’s entire season for pay-per-viewer subscribers. LeBron gracing the front of Sports Illustrated was the final piece to solidifying James’s title as the most hyped basketball prospect ever. All of this was enough for Nike to take a risk and sign the 17 year-old from Akron to a seven-year, $90 million shoe deal.
Fast-forward 12 years and Nike seems to have put its faith in the right guy. The Air Jordan brand hasn’t fallen off the way some analysts predicted it would. In fact, it still owns 58 percent of the basketball shoe market and has even expanded to different sports. However, LeBron James can sell $340 million of shoes in a 12-month period. That’s in no small part because of what happened between 2003 and 2015.
LeBron couldn’t seem to do any wrong in his first seven years in the league. At merely 22 years old, he bravely led a hodgepodge Cleveland Cavaliers team to the finals. Despite getting steamrolled by the San Antonio Spurs, fans and players alike knew that he would get his sooner rather than later. Endorsement deals, highlight dunks, and pressure all accumulated. And yet, by 2010, his team’s performance — thus, LeBron’s image — was declining.
A lot of people still have not forgiven LeBron for his decision to publicly turn his back on his hometown — an area that has not had much to look forward to over the past thirty years — on national television. But here’s the truth: his redemption arc makes for a much more compelling story, and a much easier sell, for Nike.
When LeBron James left Cleveland, he immediately became the villain, and Nike was there to remind us. A lot of people loved the drama, so shoe sales did well. After he lost in the finals, the public quickly began to feel sorry for him. All he wanted was to win. He later admitted he should not have turned his back on Cleveland. So when he won that first ring, the public praise for LeBron was everywhere. In the first commercial to air immediately after the finals, Nike reminded us that this guy might be worth praising again. How quickly the story can change.
After four years in Miami, not only did LeBron’s return voyage to Cleveland indicate his own career was coming full circle, it solidified his role as Nike-worshipers’ new savior. A lifetime contract seemed necessary to fulfill such a role.
Whereas Jordan stands for greatness and defying gravity, LeBron now stands for redemption and hope. He carries not only the burdens and sins of his own past on his shoulders, but the burdens and sins of Ohio as well. Nike ads, like the one below, remind us. It’s no coincidence that his body takes the form of a cross or that he is looking skyward. Even the copy borrows from common evangelical jargon.
LeBron James and Michael Jordan are two examples of how Nike has perfected the art of selling the hero. Each of them have similarities to the other, but Nike has made each man stand for something unique, and that’s on purpose. Nike knows that there are many types of heroes that people want to buy because there are many types of heroes that people admire. LeBron and Michael followers may interpret their Nike experience differently, but their donations still go to the almighty swoosh. LeBron is the latest in what will one day become an exhaustive list for Nike-cult followers to select and worship.
LeBron’s story is far from over, though. This story is heading toward a fairytale ending, where the chosen one, as Sports Illustrated prophesied long ago, returns home to deliver his promise of salvation to a struggling region. LeBron shoe sales will set records. Nike’s stock price will skyrocket. Even the most disconnected members of society will know LeBron’s name and his story. And in 50 years, we’ll recount that day with vivid details the same way people recount watching the JFK vs. Nixon debate or watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show more than 50 years later.
For we are all witnesses.
