Alice Roullet de La Bouillerie

NIKE CASE – COLIN KAEPERNICK

The 3th of September 2018, Nike chose to use the face of Colin Kaepernick to illustrate its

new campaign “Just do it, even if it means giving up everything”. This strong political

position in a society more and more divided on the political spectrum lead to burning

debates in the media. We will thus analyze their choice of this marketing strategy : what

were the financial consequences of this campaign on Nike ? How has the image of the brand

evolved in people’s mind after this campaign ? Is it a good idea for a brand to take position in

a political debate ?

I. The Facts : summary of the file

a. historic marketing strategy “Just Do It” : a universal moto.

In 1987 when Dan Wieden came up with the idea of the “Just do It” slogan, it was actually

ment to be a unifying moto, to encourage everyone to push their boundaries, and do better

in sport. To make people feel that with nike, nothing was impossible, and you just had to

push yourself. At the origin the slogan was not divisive, but as said in the document it was “a

universal appeal to the primordial human need to move” – every single American from this

multicultural society could feel concerned by this slogan.

b. Nike’s situation in 2018

In 2018, Nike is still the main sportswear brand of the market. However, in 2018, Nike was

actually struggling for several reasons. First of all, they were the target of many criticism

1
Alice Roullet de La Bouillerie

from the MeToo movement, since many senior executives were accused of sexual

harassment. Moreover, they were still strongly criticized for the work conditions of some of

their factories, this has been known for a long time, but the spread of alter-mondialist

movements invited people to boycott nike to protest against the work conditions of their

factories. Even though in 2018, Nike kept expanding it sales in the world, the brnad lost 2%

of its sales in North America, and Adidas was take more and more share of the footswear

and sportswear market. For the first time Adidas produced the best selling shoes with its

Superstar. Nike thus appeared to be challenged at the time, and needed to take marketing

actions to restore a positive image, especially towards the American liberal part of its

consumer who condemned its ethics.

c. The ambiguous relations between Nike, the NFL and Colin Kaepernick

before the campaign.

In 2011, Nike and Colin Kaepernick signed an endorsement deal. As a rising star in the

football field, Colin Kaepernick became the starting quarterback of the NFL and lead the

team to the Superbowl and then to the NFC championship. He was the image of success,

determination, pushing boundaries, always aiming the best : a perfect fit to illustrate Nike

image.

However, in 2016, when he started protesting against the national anthem and

against the trump administration, when he clearly showed his support to the black lives

matter movement, questions started rousing in the Nike administration. These

interrogations got worst when Kaepernick actually became a free player and failed to find a

new team even though he was one of the best, and most popular football player. When he

2
Alice Roullet de La Bouillerie

was in the middle of all the controversies and the public debate, Nike ignored all of what was

going on and didn’t take a position in the debate to support or condemn him. This

ambivalent position was due to the contract between Nike and the NFL. Colin Kaepernick

was in a legal trial with the NFL, and at the same time Nike had a contract with the NFL

worth 1,1 billion of dollars, this double-sided situation made the company reluctant to take

position and risk endangering its relationship with the NFL to support Kaepernick at the time.

All these parameters lead to all the debates around the Nike campaign which used

Colin Kaepernick’s image to illustrate the slogan “just do it. Even if it means giving up

everything” launched on the 3rd of September 2018. We will analyze the relevance and

impact of this campaign in our second part.

II. Was it a good marketing strategy to put Colin Kaepernic as the face of Nike

anniversary campaign “Just do it” ?

a. Should Nike make clear of its political orientation ?

We will start by evoke the evolution of the American market and the new

expectations of the consumers when they buy a brand. With the polarization of the political

life in the US, consumers more and more take into account the political position of a brand

to make their purchases. When in the past, people focused on the quality of a product, its

price and its general value, recent consumers take a new variable to guide their decision to

buy which is the political commitment of a brand. All over the world, brand have started to

make their political orientation clear to attract and build customer loyalty. To take a recent

3
Alice Roullet de La Bouillerie

example, the Yorkshire Tea have react on twitter to Laura Towler’s criticism of the BLM

movement with the tweet “Don’t buy our tea again”. On a diffrenet subject, many brands

have clearly express their concern about the climat change like Pantagonia who decided to

sell their model of embroidered sleeveless westcoast only to companies who had a mission

to protect the planet.

The Exhibit 6 of the document shows that among the consumers, 55% are willing to

purchase less from a brand if they don’t agree with its position on Social or Political issues.

On the other hand, if they support the brand’s perspective on these issues, 33% are willing

to buy more from this brand and 52% will show greater brand loyalty. In this evolving global

market where 1 out of 2 people is a “belief-driven buyers” (exhibit 5), it is more and more

important for brands like Nike to make their position and values clear.

However, on the other hand, studies show that 67% of American are tired of the

political polarization of America and don’t like the fact that political debate invade all the

aspect of their life. That is also the position of 21% of chief marketing officers who believes

that it is not the role of an organization to take position in the public debate and that it is a

“none core-business activity”.

However in the view of exhibit 5, this worldwide study shows that almost always 50%

of the people interviewed believe that brands can have a greater impact than government to

help tackle social issues and that they even should do more about it. This results in a very

complex situation, because the market is not only divided between consumers who believe

brands should make their position clear on social a political issues, and those who believe it

is not their place, but among the the “belief-driven buyer part” between those who will

support the brand positioning, and those who will not.

4
Alice Roullet de La Bouillerie

b. Should Nike have chosen Colin Kaepernick as the face its anniversary just do

it campaign ?

As shown in the file, companies who try to make clear of their political position can often get

criticize and it can easily backfire in a negative way. This is what happened when Pepsi used

the image of Kendal Jenner who tried to solve racial tensions. This got a lot of criticism since

Pepsi had never been involve in the fight against racial discrimination and they decided to

use a white model to illustrate their position. Taking position on the subject might thus be a

source of criticism.

However, Nike’s marketing history show that the brand often took side in other

debates and stood by the sports player they had a endorsement deal with. For example, the

brand clearly supported muslim women who were strongly criticized in 2017 with the

campaign “What will they say about your” featuring women doing sports while wearing a

hijab. It is thus in their value and in their practice to take a political dimension. Moreover, on

the more controversed side, Nike never stood up athletes who were involved in trials that

convicted them of rape, or drug use, during the Maria Sharapovna scandal for example. Thus

it seems fair that Nike decided to stand by Colin Kaepernick during the debate about his

actions of kneeling during the American anthem, which is appears to be a far less

condemnable crime than those of Tiger Woods or Maria Sharapovna.

But should Nike have use the face of Colin Kaepernick as the face of the anniversary

of the campaign just do it ? Indeed, not only did Nike decide to stand by Kaepernick, but

they even put him on huge ads on New York’s billboards and shared the “dream crazy” video

on their social media, and on television. To me this was a relevant and interesting choice of

Marketing, not only because Colin Kaepernick seems to embody the nike spirit as it is one of

5
Alice Roullet de La Bouillerie

the best NFL player, but also because Nike decided to take action and get involve in a debate

that everyone knew about and talked about. As seen in the previous part, the growing part

of “belief-driven consumer” seems to be a market to conquer, and the market of the future.

If Nike want to remain a competitive brand for the next generations, it had to take a side in

the Black lives matter movement. Furthermore, as shown in the video made of Colin

Kaepernick featuring other athletes, the ideal of the Just do it campaign is showing that

despite all the discrimination you can encounter in your life, all the obstacle people say you

wont be able to face, it is just a matter of believing you can do it. As the world has evolved,

the slogan “Just do it” had to adapt to the changing social conditions, and take a deeper

meaning representing a discriminated part of the American population. If Nike wanted to be

true to its own slogan “just do it”, as brand, they also have to do something about the

inequality in the world and thus step ahead and make clear of their position. I believe that it

would have been contradictory to encourage people to act, to do things meanwhile

remaining silent about a national that concerned one of their own player.

I thus believe that, despite the fact that some of the Nike administration were against

taking the side of Colin Kaepernick, the fit between Kaepernick’s values and Nike history of

brand activism and ideology were a perfect fit. Even if they received a great deal of criticism,

this campaign was maybe more than just a marketing buzz, was also at stake the necessity

for the brand to follow its own slogan “just do it”, by taking the risk of going against a part of

their customer to stand by their athlete and values.

III. Consequences of the campaign : has the use of Colin Kaepernick been a positive

or negative

6
Alice Roullet de La Bouillerie

a. Has it had a positive or negative impact on the brand ?

This marketing decision lead to a division between the reactions that was expected. As Nike

to took a clear position in the Colin Kaepernick controversy, it received many good reviews

of people that supported Colin’s actions such as Tim Crow’s reaction who saluted the fact

the Nike was actually not only supporting BLM movements, but clearly standing against

Trump. However, for a huge part of American that voted for Trump and who bought Nike, it

was seen as a way of rejecting them. For American patriot who strongly support the national

anthem, Nike this campaign was seen as a way for Nike to say that they were not wanted as

customers, that they were against them. It is thus hard to say objectively if this campaign

had had a positive consequence on the image of Nike since, depending on your political

orientation, this campaign either positively or negatively impact your perception of the

brand

Even if we look more closely at the data it is hard to explain clearly the impact of the

campaign on the image of Nike. Indeed, if we can assure that Nike has been at the center of

the public attention after this ad campaign, the “dream crazy “ video generating 5 millions

views on youtube, and the mention of “Just do it” slogan increasing by 3,460%, data shows

that it had both a positive and negative impact.

Among pople interviewed in a twitter poll 29% said they were more likely to buy Nike

products weather 23% said they were less likely which shows how divided the reactions to

this campaign were (even though, it is still more positive than negative). Furthermore, the

Exhibit 9 shows how the part of negative mentions of the brand has increased on Social

Media. Exhibit 10 taken from the Morning consult also illustrate how the favorability of Nike

dropped from 69% before the campaign to 35% after, if all categories of people are united.

7
Alice Roullet de La Bouillerie

As seen in Exhibit 19, people on social media were strongly criticizing Nike’s position bruning

some of its product and sharing the hashtag #BoycottNike

So can we thus conclude that the campaign had a negative impact on Nike ?

b. The return campaign Return on investment

Even though many reactions were negative online, the concrete effect of this campaign were

actually positive. Even though some criticism were negative, Nike has never had so much

attention since the brand started measuring its advertising awareness : In America, 50% of

the population over 18 saw this ad. One thing sure is that Nike was at the center of many

discussion, and thus took a important place in people’s mind. After the campaign, the

instragram page even gained 170 000 followers. Moreover, the brand might be criticized by

the older part of the population, but for the young generations which are the consumers of

tomorrow, the ad have in majority positively impact their perception of the brand : 56% of

the younger generations said they were more likely to buy Nike. If I were the company’s

chief marketing officer, I would see this huge media engagement, and this srong approuval

among the younger generations as a success of my marketing strategy since it would secure

nike’s sell in a long term perspective.

This thus resulted in concrete return on investment for the brand. Even if Nike

invested between $3 000 and $20 000 to put the ad on each new York billboard, $505 000 to

put the ad before the NFL game, this ad had a positive consequence on Nike sales and

valorization in the Stock Market. Indeed, between September 3 and September 13, Nike sold

out more items than between the ten days before the ad. It sales grew of 31% in 3 days.

8
Alice Roullet de La Bouillerie

Moreover, as we can see in the Exhibit 17 and 18, Nike stock price and market capitalization

grew from $127,4 billion on Tuesday to $135.6 billion on Friday which shows how the impact

of the campaign was actually mainly positive despite of all the negative criticism. As the

company’s chief financial officer, these metrics are clear sign of the good impact of the

campaign on Nike’s image. It shows that investors trust Nike, and believe that in the future it

will keep growing and creating value. This can be explained by the fact that Nike’s position is

supported by the younger generations, and thus by the future consumers of the brand.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, I would say that Nike has mostly benefited from the campaign. Even

though this campaign put the face of Colin Kaepernick everywhere, this had no concrete

impact on his career as a football player. He was already in the center of the controversies,

and this campaign didn’t radically change the image people had of him since he was already

clear about his political belief. However, people were more focus on the fact that the very

popular brand Nike dared to show their side in the debate. Even if the brand was criticized,

they were at the center of many debates and talked about everywhere, they received way

more publicity than what they payed for. Maybe this ad was a sort of publicity stunt (as

exhibit 10 suggests), and can be incoherent with other Nike scandals about its work ethics,

or sexist behaviors among its employees, but it was still a way to defend a value supported

by a growing part of the population, a way to defend discrimination and inequality. This

campaign is thus a benefit for nike not only from a short term, but also from a long term

perspective since the American population is more and more aware and engaged in the fight

against discrimination.