Nike - Find Your Greatness

Blog #1 - Ad Campaign

It is not just the championship athlete or a gold medalist that aspires to push their limits. It is also the everyday person who strives to achieve on their own terms, to set and realize personal goals and reach their own defining moment of greatness.That’s the main idea behind Nike’s "Find Your Greatness" campaign, a powerful message to inspire anyone who wants to achieve their own moment of greatness in sport. This campaign was launched just as the world focuses on the best of the best in the Olympic Games. 

The centerpiece of the Nike campaign is a "Find Your Greatness" film that came to social media and television on July 25, it was featured on the YouTube homepage on July 26th. The campaign was also promoted by a global Twitter #findgreatness hashtag to start conversation  on Twitter around how athletes everywhere find their own greatness. All of the athletes featured in the films are suppose to be average people trying to accomplish great feats for themselves whether it be boxing, skateboarding, water polo or even wheelchair racing. The initial "Find Your Greatness" ad is about one minute long but there are about 20 other commercials that range from about 17 to 20 seconds long, each featuring a different sport. The campaign is primarily video while there are print ads that feature the usual simple Nike sayings. I first saw this  commercial during the Olympics and Nike has continued the campaign with many videos and ads to help promote average athletes to find their greatness. 

The Nike Campaign focuses on the average Joe instead of focusing on already highly achieved athletes  It portrays overweight, disabled and young athletes. By using the plain-folks pitch Nike tries to convey simply that you can go out and accomplish something if the people depicted in the ads can. The slogan is very straight forward, very simple and be applied to everyone. Nike is trying to convey that basically it can help you reach your goals and inspirational people use Nike to reach their goals.You could also see a little bit of the bandwagon effect by showing all these average people accomplishing things it pushes other people to follow in their foot steps. People's insecurities about themselves and things such as being overweight could come into play as well, which would be target by the hidden-fear appeal. The campaign uses the association principle to draw on a positive cultural value (exercise, reaching goals, accomplishing a task).

The "Find Your Greatness" campaign is new in the sense of Nike in that it is focusing on average people instead of all the great accomplished athletes it usually shows. But the idea of using average people to inspire consumers of help sell a product is not that new. Dove has also used overweight women to help showcase its skincare line in the "Real Beauty" campaign. The idea of using average people to help gain consumers is a relatively new idea from what I have seen but I don't think it has much life to it. I think that is proven to be effective but once the idea is used over and over it will no longer be effective. The target audience to this ad could be almost everyone but it is really focusing on the average day to day athlete  The person that works out a couple times a week and tries to stay healthy. The ad's all feature different types of people trying to accomplish different things. I did not find many stereotypes within the ad's but I saw more of inspiration. The ad was showing people in wheelchairs racing, a small child diving, and a woman pogoing. I think Nike tried to show people doing what they are doing on a day to day basis in-order to inspire people to go out an be active.

Achieving greatness does not always mean winning.

The strengths of the ad are that it is entertaining to watch, it is inspirational and they can almost apply to anyone. By covering so much diversity within the ad's Nike accomplishes establishing a huge target market and consumer following. The weaknesses of the advertisements is that they are brief and don't sell and actual product it sells a brand but I think that's what Nike is famous for in its advertising. Nike does not try to sell a shoe, a shirt or a piece of equipment. Nike tries to sell Nike as a whole. These advertisements were very memorable and I am upset I did not look into them further until now. I watched the short film as well as the 20+ video commercials. These ads connected with me very well. usually I do not want to admit that a company sold me based upon an advertisement because of course I would like to think I am above that. But I found these ads so inspiring, so entertaining and after watching them  feel like I'm not doing much with my life, actively. 

After finding many articles discussing the advertisement and the campaign as a whole I discovered that everyone loves it! It was one of the most viewed advertisements of the summer online and all together the commercials have millions of views on YouTube. I think after researching what others had to say everyone feels mutual on these advertisement, they are inspirational and positive! I already own plenty of Nike and love the quality that Nike produces.I have already shown the advertisement campaign to many friends and I urge you too as well! This ad showed me that you don't have to have famous people, flashy things or low prices to have an effective commercial. If you put a positive message with a positive product then of course your going to be successful. These ads represented the little bit of advertising that is positive and is nothing but honest. 

Some interesting links -

Find Your Greatness - Video reviews

Obesity Society Praises Nike

Nike Ambushes Adidas