Just Tweet It
My mother has been working in marketing for over 20 years, so basically more than my lifetime. Since I was little, I’ve constantly been hearing about her campaigns and her opinion on the ones she saw on the street. In fact, it was thanks to her job that I realized I wanted to study and work in media. Now that I’m older and social media surrounds our everyday lives, my mom and I always send each other examples of social media wins and fails.
Nike is one of my favourite brands in the world, as an athlete and fitness enthusiast myself. I believe that Nike is constantly winning on social media. I don’t think they’ve had a specific winning moment, but they have brought their real world empire onto social media and expanded the way they reach their audience. It is their constant presence and type of content that makes them succeed. Nike’s Twitter is a valuable part of their communication and audience engagement. The majority of Nike Toronto’s tweets are responses to their followers’ inquiries and statements. When a person tweets about their morning workout, they reply to them with a motivating response, which is very in sync with their brand.
In my experience, I direct messaged Nike Toronto to ask about the possibility of shooting a video on location. When I sent the message, I knew it was a long shot, I mean I was messaging Nike…. Nike. Would they answer a message from someone who isn’t verified? Probably not. Plot twist. They answered and were incredible polite and helpful with my situation.
Recently, they released a campaign called “Equality”, that works around the idea that “equality should have no boundaries”, in sports or anywhere else. They feature successful athletes like Lebron James, Megan Rapinoe and Serena Williams. They took this campaign video to Instagram, where Serena Williams promoted it to her 5 million followers, as well as individuals like Latin actress Gina Rodriguez.
It is important to note that their direct competitor, Adidas, has stepped up their social media game. Adidas not only features well known celebrities like model, Karlie Kloss, but they are now looking out for fitness bloggers with platforms and a substantial following. A few weeks back, Adidas took this group of women to San Francisco, for an ambassador event, where they could network, learn and participate in group workouts. This event obviously was promoted in all the bloggers’ platforms, and therefore reached more people. What Adidas is doing is choosing to level with their consumers by working with people who seem more approachable and reachable than someone like Lebron James.
Nike works with mostly planned content. They are a huge company, but it is rare to see them use generic, impersonal content. Their campaigns always tend to create emotion or motivation in the viewer, and their recent “Equality” campaign was released at a very specific time. The world is currently going through some crises regarding race, class and gender, and this campaign speaks to these issues. Without saying much, they reveal their brand and standpoint, which to me, is a win. Their Twitter is not generic at all. You can tell that someone is physically taking the time to answer their followers and making it a unique experience.
In my opinion, Nike will be at the top of the empire for a while, if not forever. They seem to know exactly what they have done, what they are doing and what they’re going to do. Nike has knowledgeable, smart people working on their brand and maybe one day, it will be one of us.
https://www.hrc.org/blog/nike-launches-powerful-equality-campaign
