After one of its worst fiscal years in two decades, Nike is renewing its focus on brand marketing.
- The company is reinvesting $1 billion in consumer-facing activities, CEO John Donahoe told investors in June, per Bloomberg.
- Most of this investment is focused on the Paris Olympics.
- “This Olympics will be our biggest ... it will be our largest media spend," Heidi O'Neill, Nike’s president of consumer, product, and brand, told Reuters.
The strategy: Nike’s Olympics efforts kicked off in April, with the brand launching new products, hosting in-person events with athletes like Jordan Chiles and Sha’Carri Richardson, and debuting a controversial ad campaign.
- The “Winning Isn’t for Everyone” campaign highlights the world’s greatest athletes and praises their relentless pursuit of winning.
- The campaign is meant to “celebrate the voice of the athlete,” said Nicole Graham, CMO at Nike.
- But some critics are saying the company went too far. For example, Fernando Desouches, managing director at BBD Perfect Storm called it a “toxic narrative” in an opinion piece written for The Drum.
Did it work? There isn’t much data currently available on Nike’s Olympics performance, but from what little is out there, it seems the Games were a success.
- During the opening week of the Olympics (July 26 to August 1), Nike increased visits to its direct-to-consumer (D2C) site, per data from Similarweb as reported by Reuters. Although competitor Puma also increased visits to its D2C site, others, like Adidas, Hoka, and On saw their visits decline.
- Visits to Nike’s site peaked at 2 million on July 31 after US gymnast Simone Biles earned her seventh Olympic gold medal. Of those visits, 86,900 included a sale. This is higher than Adidas’ 3,600 conversions out of 532,500 site visits.
- On resale platform StockX, Nike’s Jordan 4 Retro SE Paris Olympics Wet Cement shoes were the highest-selling Olympic product on the site.
Zooming out: Nike made a big splash with its Olympics campaign, but it’s unclear whether the company will secure the gold in 2024.
- Many of the company’s latest product innovations won’t hit the shelves until next year.
- Plus, Nike is still trying to perfect the balance between D2C and wholesale after leaning too heavily on D2C over the past year.
- We forecast Nike Inc. will grow its sales 5.5% this year to reach $25.07 billion, up from 2023’s growth of 4.9% YoY.
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