Online+Advertising+Critque

Nike’s marketing strategy is one of the main reasons to the company’s success. Nike is a premium-brand that sells well-designed, expensive products. "Nike attracts customers with marketing strategy centered on a brand image which is achieved by its distinctive logo (Nike Swoosh) and its slogan ‘Just do it’" (Kasky v. Nike: Just the Facts). To maintain its image, the company spends heavily on advertising and brand promotion. Nike sponsors many celebrity athletes, professional sporting teams and college athletic teams. There are also several ad campaigns run by Nike featuring numerous sports celebrities.

 Kasky v. Nike: Just the FactsX []
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Ronaldinho 'Crossbar'

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In 2006, Nike advertised tiempo legend shoes featuring the world famous soccer star, Ronaldinho. In the video, he dons a pair of tiempos from a golden case, and begins showing off his skills with the soccer ball. He starts shooting volleys from outside the box onto the crossbar. He does that four times in a row, without letting the ball hit the ground. It is nearly impossible to do something like that. There was massive questioning on whether or not this ad was real or computer-edited. It drove millions of soccer fans and interested viewers into the campaign. Internet chat rooms lit up with discussions on the video featuring Ronaldinho, and whether or not he really did that. ‘It was known as Nike Ronaldinho Touch of Gold ‘Crossbar’ video: it was one of the most watched viral video campaigns ever on the internet with more than 50 million views globally’.(Sunday Times)

'The creative work is done by Framfab, it won the Gold Lions on the Cannes Lions Festival for the campaign' (Sunday Times).

The grainy footage makes the video look like it has been secretly taken from a digital camera at first. But it is made like that on purpose, and is actually taken from a broadcast standard camera. At the end of the video, it displays the credits with the words ‘nikefootball.com’. The video is available in the archives of ‘www.NikeFootball.com’. It is also available on YouTube, where the video received 2% of visits from searches for Ronaldinho in the first four weeks (Hitwise).

In an interview, Ronaldinho confessed to a reporter that it was, in fact, real and stated that he occasionally practices that specific skill. However, the reporter refused to believe him (bbc.com). This inspired a lot of further discussion on the Internet, because it is hard to believe anyone could be skilled enough to do that.

The German Spiegel Online wrote that Ronaldinho’s skills were not real. Nike Europe admitted that only two of the shots were real, while the rest were reworked on the computer (Spiegel Online).

Nike's lead global producer, David Reti, talks about the Ronaldinho campaign on the New Media Age website. He said that the video is being pushed through a viral campaign and podcasts directories further helped to spread the ad campaign. The campaign was also spread through mobile with a dedicated video WAP site (Blog of sports business).

The association with Ronaldinho, named player of the year in 2005, seems to have resulted in a boost in online brand awareness for Nike Football. It is certainly pure viral marketing, and the fact that it is downloadable, increases the potential to get to its target market. Nike released this video on the internet because it takes too long for a TV ad to be released, and because their target market was basically young soccer fans that are more active on the Internet.

Whether the skills by Ronaldinho were real or fake, as many fans and bloggers still don’t know, the main purpose of Nike releasing the video was a completely successful viral ad campaign. There were no negative thoughts about Nike albeit maybe displaying something fake. It only created a point of discussion through the chat rooms and blogs, which itself was a part of viral marketing.

The Sunday Times [] Hitwise [] bbc.com [] Spiegel Online [] Blog of Sports Business []
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'Write the Future'

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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A month before the Soccer World Cup 2010, Nike unveiled an action-packed three minute film ‘Write the Future’, which brought together some of the world’s greatest soccer players and sports fans from around the world. This epic film shows some soccer scenes and dramatic captures: a moment when headlines are written from a single pass of the ball, or when one strike can bring a whole nation eternal happiness, while bringing others down their knees. ‘This video depicts soccer stars whose astounding athletic accomplishments and failures send waves through society, affecting world events and changing their own lives’.(Guerilla)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This campaign is directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Inarritu is a renowned Hollywood producer / director, including in his credits 21 Grams and Babel. It was shot across the world in locations such as Madrid, Machester, London, Nairobi, Los Angeles and California. Some of the world’s best players, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, and Wayne Rooney, were featured with many others. Surely this campaign would not have been unprofessional and small. "This video set a new record for the most views of a viral video ad in its debut week, according to web video analytics company Visible Measures’" (Guerilla).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This epic campaign really captures the scale, emotion and impact that one single moment in a football game can have on a player, fan or nation,” said Davide Grasso, NIKE, Vice President of Global Football Marketing. He further adds that 'it's just the beginning, and the next stage will allow fans to engage in a more incredible way’ (Nikebiz). Fans could write their own future through a unique experience on NikeFootball.com, that would give them the power to create personalized videos, photos and other information. They can take this personalized content to build their own Facebook campaign in an attempt to get noticed and get selected for Nike Academy Football camp, that is scouted by the English Premier League.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Nike began releasing funny little teasers through YouTube two weeks before the release of the film. This aroused more curiosity amongst fans about the new campaign. Nike Facebook members were the first to view the video. The next day onwards the campaign rolled through global partnerships with YouTube, Facebook and QQ.com. The film and its clips were set to air across 32 countries, sharing the campaign with millions of fans around the world, through the World cup.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A few of the reasons for this campaign's success were the production scale, the players, and the strategy used in viral marketing. Other reasons included of course the video and the contents itself. Most of Nike’s ad campaigns are based on daily life activities. The video shows the future - the World Cup - and how each pivotal moment in the World Cup will have a rippling effect on fans across the globe. The creativity shown in Cannavaro’s pop culture moments, Ronaldo’s premiere, and Rooney’s ‘hero or zero story’, caught fans' eyes with such big-scale production, that it was undoubtedly one of the biggest ad campaigns ever witnessed. A recent Nielsen study of blogs, message boards and social networking sites, has found that Nike has been able to create a remarkably large online buzz.

Guerilla [] Nikebiz []
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