Nike Captured The Hearts Of People With Innovative Cultural Expressions.

Arouse the resonance of consumers around the world.

How did it happen? Is it based on excellent technology and design innovation?

In the early days of Nike, many other technological innovations were emphasized.

Similarly, all athletes can only attract attention to innovation.

But for jogger and Jogger

When ordinary people wear sandals, these technical differences do not matter at all.

For example, Nike's "air cushioned shoes", although their performance and appearance are absolutely the same, have not had any impact on the company's revenue, because the mass consumers have never been care at all.

Until ten years later, due to the correct way of thinking, the technology has attracted the attention of the market, and has also had a huge impact on the company's revenue.

Is it because of the influence of many famous sports stars?

Similarly, the early establishment of Nike, like its competitors, is mainly based on the myth of star sportsmen, and asks athletes to wear products and display exceptional performance, and then publicize products as the reasons for the brilliant achievements of star athletes.

However, on the one hand, we can not see the brand difference with our competitors. In fact, the consumer market reaction is also very cold.

After all, the central focus of athletes' life in competitive sports is not necessarily related to the general public.

Facts have proved that the above two kinds are not the most important and crucial reasons.

Even in the hearts of professional athletes, they are influential.

The true share of sales of brands should come from ordinary consumers.

The problem facing Nike is how to effectively arouse the resonance of non professional athletes and convince them that Nike is a running shoe with excellent performance.

How to achieve it?

Rely on innovative culture to capture people's hearts.

What Nike has done is to abandon the marketing model of the myth of star athletes' performance, and use innovative cultural expression to arouse the sympathy of consumers around the world by touching the anxiety and longing of the public.

This resonance makes people think that Nike shoes perform better than other competitors.

Cultural expression is composed of ideology, myth and cultural code.

"Ideology" can be expressed as: some kind of ideas (values) produced by the influence of social environment.

It is not inherent in the human brain, but rather from social existence.

Ideology profoundly shapes our everyday values and actions.

For brands, ideology is a unique attitude towards culture as a product.

Ideology is a concept, not a representation, but it can be expressed in many ways.

It is different from straightforward sales proposition, which enables consumers to experience through various levels of cultural expression.

Therefore, only through the pmission of myth and cultural code can ideology enter culture.

The so-called "myth" is an educational story. It reveals ideology and dramatize ideology, making it easier to understand and feel, and resonate with it.

"Cultural code" is a specific content element of culture. The cultural significance of these elements has long been established in society and history.

By using the appropriate cultural code, people will understand and experience the meaning of brand culture more easily.

For example, to strengthen the history and culture of liquor brands, the ancient crafts, manufacturing scenes and other text, language or visual narrative style displayed in advertisements are the unique cultural codes of the brand.

Cultural cipher exists in any market activity, from product design, packaging to retail mode, market communication, service manuals, and CEO's speeches.

The myth of a brand takes off with its cultural code.

Next, I will focus on how Nike specifically launches cultural innovation, so that the brand can surpass the emotional marketing of product performance and surface and become a super cultural symbol in the world.

The ideology of "individual struggle will"

Since the beginning of the 1970s, the prosperity and development of the United States after World War II has been broken for 25 years. The economy is stagflated, and Japan and West Germany are catching up.

Americans need to take a completely different mental state and yearn for examples, intensity and ambition in culture.

In the late 1970s, in order to cope with the needs of the new competitive environment, running was suddenly popular.

With the popularity of jogging, running shoes are also popular.

Nike grabbed the opportunity of "personal will," and abandoned the marketing model emphasizing product performance and myth of star sportsmen's performance, and began to use advertising to publicize runners' Ideology: running -- an excellent way for Americans to recall the spirit of competition.

The main character of Nike's advertisement begins with the obscure runner's personal story.

Advertising slogans have become "runways without end points". "Winning matches is relatively easy, but beating yourself is an endless investment" and so on.

It is more popular to emphasize the result and the result, and advocate the spirit of perseverance and perseverance.

This is the spirit that Americans need to regain in that era.

As a result, Nike's sales surpassed Adidas in 1979.

However, with the steady development of jogging, some of these market opportunities also shrank.

Nike needs to expand its brand to other sports.

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In 1985, Nike began to sign Michael's Jordan, and painstakingly designed a unique shoe "flying Jordan" around the "air cushion" technology, and began to rely on the myth of athlete's performance again.

Although Jordan was already a phenomenal star, he had little influence on Nike sales in the first three years of signing the contract.

The reason is that Nike advertising has become "cliche" again, which can not arouse people's sympathy. For example, the voice of a TV advertisement is "who says human can not fly?"

Once again break through the self, find "brand myth".

The key to solve the sales of Nike basketball shoes is how to pfer Nike's idea of "personal will" to other footwear products, which has been established in the market of running shoes.

This requires a novel and powerful cultural expression.

In July 1, 1987, Nike released its first "Just Do It" advertisement, sending out a slogan full of encouragement to control its own destiny.

This slogan has at least three meanings.

1) by conveying a cultural and social value, it aims to inspire Americans to surpass dreams.

2) call on people to face the challenges of the new competitive environment and exercise their body and spirit with optimism and tenacity.

3) advocate a sports spirit: Athletes rely on tenacity and determination of government to win the spirit of adversity.

The specific plot of the Nike brand myth is that the athletes in advertising are overcome by some kind of harsh social discrimination (origin, race, gender, etc.). They overcome these obstacles with the spirit of personal struggle (Nike highly praised) and win the final victory.

Therefore, Nike can also help you overcome the present adversity, even if you are faced with a professional and social environment where meat is weak and strong food, you can finally achieve your dream.

They also extended this cultural expression to the outside world of sports and began to pay attention to all kinds of social discrimination that athletes need to overcome.

Since then, Nike's advertisements contain the cultural code of racism, sexism and global poverty.

Discovering and establishing the brand "cultural code"

Based on advocating personal struggle will, in order to achieve a more successful spread from the strong, to the underprivileged group of slums and other social underprivileged groups, Nike even tried to clean up Jordan as a "myth" from the "slum". In the next ten years, Jordan's mental state became the motive force to stimulate the volitional will of the American public.

Nike has placed the "Just Do It" myth in the slums, creating a revolution in thought by describing the myth that the bottom of the lowest African Americans beat the bad situation by fighting the wills.

For example, its advertisements in the United States show scenes of urban slums: icy high-rise public housing, old basketball courts surrounded by chains, and streets that are littered with rubbish.

All these passwords add up to the harsh realities and immense difficulties of life.

In this scenario, athletes can overcome overlooked social barriers, such as racial discrimination and poverty, if they are full of fighting spirit and wear Nike shoes.

Brand extension, the continuation of the myth of the American dream

Since then, in the extension of other sports products other than basketball shoes, Nike has adhered to the myth of "Just Do It" when expanding its brand to different regions and countries. It only adapts the way of cultural expression (cultural code) to adapt to different market development needs.

In the female market, when Nike uses the "programmed" propaganda mode of sports products, it is always difficult to succeed.

It did not become a spokesperson for women's liberation movement until it applied sociology to think about women's situation and caught the "cultural code" related to discrimination against women in the field of sports.

In the field of golf, Nike also used the same "cultural code". Through the inspirational advertisement of tiger Woods's growth and struggle, he also portrayed him as a typical image of overcoming racial discrimination obstacles and showing his will to fight.

In view of different global markets, Nike uses the same "myth" to focus on people's dreams and struggle spirit at the bottom of the poor society, and to provide people with a sad myth and a glimmer of hope through the final "victory".

In Brazil, for example, the way Nike conquers consumers is to show soccer.

In 1996, the first ad was endorsed by Ronaldo, but he did not focus on his brilliant record. Instead, he played a child playing football in a dilapidated street, letting him stay in a slum scene and become a narrator of the story of Li Zhi, a long and rugged road.

The so-called Nike myth is that anyone who has a strong awakening can overcome a harsh social reality in a very inspiring and memorable way.

Summary

Of course, the success of Nike brand can not be separated from some important product innovations, such as the new technology products such as Washington sole, air cushion and so on.

But these diseases are not the main successful driving factors of crime, because the competing products of the same era also developed the same effective technology. Moreover, Nike's most important technological innovation, "air cushion shoes", was launched until ten years later, using the innovative advertising campaign to rebuild the brand image and truly stand out.

The key to the success of Nike's brand lies not in its athletic performance, nor in its simple use of big sport stars.

Because addies, Puma, CONVERSE, Reebok, these powerful opponents, all use sports stars in advertising to convey "true sports performance."

The success of Nike is based on the orthodox culture of getting rid of the myth of star athletes' performance.

Instead of overdescribing the extraordinary achievements of athletes, it draws people's attention to the slums and discrimination barriers in a broader perspective, so that people can understand the seemingly unconquered difficulties and challenges in daily life, which are nothing compared with racism, sexism and whole ball poverty.

In this way, when the objective performance of the product is not much different from that of the competitors, the difference in perceived performance between the consumers and the competitors is very huge.

All in all, Nike has won the favor of consumers in the mass market through cultural expression, because these cultural expressions have an important impact on people's self-identity.

People will strongly deduce how Nike products can improve their performance because they agree with the cultural expression of the brand.