NIKE

As one of the world’s biggest brands, Nike is so dominant that you may not have stopped to think about how they are engaging customers on social media.

From the iconic swoosh logo to the ‘Just Do It’ slogan which is now part of pop culture, Nike is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. The retail juggernaut has moved beyond the domain of selling sportswear to branding themselves as a lifestyle. It should come as no surprise that Nike takes the cake on social media as well.

Nike embraced digital before digital was even a thing. From football communities on social media to the Nike+ Run Club app, the brand has adapted to digital age and has grown aggressively, connecting with consumers locally and globally.

TECHNIQUES USED TO GAIN SOCIAL REACH

• The Creation of a Compelling Tagline

An iconic slogan for the past 29 years, Just Do It resonates with just about everyone. It connects with individuals universally, allowing anyone and everyone to come up with their interpretation. It creates a relationship between the brand and its fans. It’s actionable and speaks to you on the individual level. This catchphrase spread from the fitness world to everyday life, becoming a personal mantra for whatever life may throw your way. Well played Nike, well played.

•  The Impowerment of the Target Audience, especially the WOMEN

In an interview with FastCompany, Jackie Thomas, U.S. Brand Marketing Director for Women said, “Marketers spend too much time reminding women that they’re women.” Ater watching Nike’s commercial, you feel the need to get up and do something different, something amazing that may have never crossed your mind before. Often, messaging depicts women as weak and fearful. Nike breaks down that wall and reminds everyone that women are powerful, competitive and most importantly, passionate! 

• The use of Social Media Power

Nike may be making fewer commercials, but Nike has balanced it out by heavily focusing on digital marketing. Nike’s social media is anything and everything done right by a major company’s marketing team. The company is without a doubt ahead of its competitors when it comes to social engagement. It has the most followers an
d subscribers on all social channels. For all those Data Geeks out there, just take a look at the detailed breakdown of Nike’s social media engagement using Rival IQ!




We can also break down Nike’s social supremacy channel by channel. For example, on Twitter, Nike dominates both from an audience standpoint as well as with the most engaging social content.

• The use of #Hashtags & Themes to Build Community

Nike uses social media to create a lifestyle and sense of community among fans. Its tweets are short, punchy and compelling, and nearly always included the hashtag #justdoit or other community-building hashtags like #nikewomen. Social media is powerful for brands such as Nike because it creates two-way interactions between fans and brands. Nike optimizes this capability and dominates social media by creating a sense of community and connection with its fans.

• Rocking the Digital World!

Nike is rocking the social world. It has mastered the art of creating amazing content that reflects its empowering branding online. Nike has made itself into a magic mirror, where it projects an image of strength, passion, and determination onto everyone it engages with. Nike makes you want to get off your butt and move! It’s aggressive and straightforward approach works well and has made Nike into the iconic brand it is today (not to mention its shoes!!).

3 METHODS OF AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

1. Facebook

Like most global brands, Nike has separate Facebook pages for each of its product categories. This includes golf, skateboarding and Nike+ Run Club, as well as two football pages – one for the American version of the sport and one for the version everyone else in the world plays.

Notably, Nike Football (the proper version) has more Likes than its main account (44 million versus 32 million) and even more than the Facebook page of its closest rival, Adidas (which has 35 million). This is possibly a reflection of the association consumers make between Nike and ‘the beautiful game’, given the long list of popular campaigns the Oregon-based sports brand has produced – both past and present.



The brand has a dedicated page for specific product ranges like Air Max and Air Force 1, as well as a page specifically focused on women’s products and its female athletes, Nike Women. The former shows that the brand doesn’t solely focus on participatory sports on social, but also on its most famous sportswear lines, seeing these as standalone entities. And the latter demonstrates their recognition of the subtle differences between men’s and women’s relationship with it as a brand.

One key observation is that the brand uses Facebook a lot more sparingly for its organic social output. Since Facebook changed its algorithm earlier this year it appears the company is playing to the rules of the platform and only using Page posts for its bigger campaigns.

As Nike makes its biggest athletes (both past and present) and their achievements the focal point of its posts on the platform, posts do still generate a lot of engagement through likes and comments.


(With that said, much of the engagement with these posts is in the form of customer service queries and opinions on Nike as a brand, rather than with the creative itself).

Data from Social Bakers shows that although the page isn’t used in the same way that it may have been in the past, its follower count rose by a just over a million over the summer months into the autumn.

This is perhaps a result of big sporting events like the World Cup, Wimbledon, the NBA Finals and The Open where marquee Nike Athletes such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lebron James, Serena Williams and Tiger Woods took centre stage, thus soliciting interest and encouraging follows.

Alternatively, as more consumers look to social media as their first port of call for customer service, it could be that Nike’s fans are heading to its Facebook Page to get real-time responses from the company or air any grievances in a public forum. As mentioned just earlier, it certainly seems like they are.

Interestingly, Nike’s most-talked-about 2018 activation – its purposeful 30^th anniversary ‘Just Do It’ Colin Kaepernick campaign – is completely absent from Facebook. This may have been in a bid to avoid any negative or controversial backlash that a social media team would have to manage, or it may have been consigned to a more targeted paid social campaign.

2. Twitter

The only social channel on which Nike acknowledged the campaign was Twitter, with a retweet of Colin Kaepernick’s post.



Considering that Nike enjoyed a 31% spike in sales in addition to $43 million the campaign generated after the multichannel campaign went live through general media buzz and unpaid exposure, it seems clear that Nike has relied on the power of its brand and social media to spread the emotive campaign.

The ‘Just Do It’ anniversary campaign was reported to have been mentioned 5.2 million times on social media in the 72 hours following its release.

3. Instagram

According to Social Blade, Nike has the fourth largest following of any brand on Instagram, and with 82.6 million followers on its main profile at the time of writing, Instagram is clearly where the majority of Nike social fans flock to.

Nike uses its Instagram account slightly more regularly than its Facebook Page, publishing posts on average about once a week. One reason for this could be to the rising popularity of the photo/video sharing platform, which reached 1 billion monthly active users earlier this year.

Another reason may be the (almost) exclusively visual nature of the platform, which is better-suited to the high-quality imagery and video content the sports brand produces for its followers to consume.


The brand also keeps things consistent. By highlighting its athletes or sports teams in its posts using photo editing software, using concise copy that has a clear, motivational tone of voice, Nike sends a message that fans’ focus should be drawn toward the people that make Nike the brand it is: the athletes that it partners with.

One product line that uses Instagram to great affect is Nike Running. Collective running and running clubs have surged in popularity in recent years due to their inclusive nature, and Nike has capitalised on this by aligning its content on Instagram to reflect this behavioural shift.

It mixes offline and online content to give users of its Nike+ app and products the chance to compete and connect with friends and fellow fitness enthusiasts, as well as paying attention to finer details like naming its running profile ‘Nike Run Club’- adding to the community feel fans get from the page.

3 LINKING AND PARTICIPATION STRATEGIES

1. Original YouTube series Margot vs. Lily received over 80,000,000 views

In 2016, Nike created a Youtube series to complement its marketing campaigns.

Margot vs Lily centers around two sisters, and it features Nike merchandise like shoes, workout gear, and Nike+ technology. It also directs viewers to the #BetterforIt website, which contains more detailed content for those interested in initiating and improving their fitness journey.

But it’s not just an extended ad, the show has a compelling story that’s actually fun to watch!
As of now, the series has received over 80 million views, leading to increased downloads of the Nike+ Run and Training Club, as well as greater activity and purchases by existing members.

2.  NIKE make some really fun ads that people love sharing and talking about

Nike makes some of the best ads in the business. They teem with world-class athletes displaying their extraordinary skills.

One of Nike’s most successful ads is ‘Winner Stays’. The ad features teenage boys transforming into Ronaldo, Neymar Jr. and other soccer superstars as they battle it out on the soccer field; it netted; it netted the sportswear brand more than 107.8 million views.

3. Community Outreach Initiatives

Consumers today expect more from the companies they buy from. They want their purchases to have a positive impact on the environment and on society, and they don’t hesitate to reward brands that do.

Nike engages in several community outreach initiatives both within the US, and globally.

Three main drivers of Nike’s community outreach programme (Nike).

Recently, Nike opened its 7th community store in Detroit, a city struggling to thrive amidst bankruptcy and years of economic hardship. Like Nike’s other community stores, its mission is to serve the city through volunteer work and promoting physical fitness.

The store opened to huge lines, with customers queuing up 2 days before its launch!

CONCLUSION

Nike social media marketing continues to find success by sticking to clear, simple messages and reaching out to the right influencers to keep its products and campaigns in the public eye.

Nike demonstrates a very good role-model, from which every brand can learn a lot. Through their interactive platform (Nike+) Nike delivers opportunities for their brand community members to freely engage in the distribution of brand-content either on social media or on the platform. Nike never stops developing innovative ideas to catch the attention of its brand community. With millions of followers on every social media platform Nike knows exactly how to successfully establish the link between online brand community and social media performance. If you ask them what is their secret to success, they would probably answer: Just do it!