Nike: Just Do It (Summary)
The article discusses the relationship between Nike’s chairman Phil Knight and basketball legend Michael Jordan as key to Nike’s success. The blossoming relationship between the two saw Nike mark the company’s culture of everyday sportswear. As the Nike Guy, Jordan improved Nike’s business and sports culture through his excellent skills as an athlete and his greatness as both a person and an athlete. Nike built its brand around Jordan because he believed that the emotional energy used to sell products does not work. Instead, companies should tether their products around compelling and profound aspects. Jordan played a considerable role in Nike’s rise to prominence and business success as a sportswear manufacturer and seller in the eighties. In his first-ever commercial for Nike, Jordan displayed a great basketball player’s prowess and skill. The commercial, selling Air Jordan, saw Nike’s sale for this product skyrocket within days, with Americans going on a shopping spree and leading to a hike in demand and a shortage of the product’s supply. Jordan’s new Nike advert improved sales for each new season, and this rise saw Nike’s budget move from approximately $20 million to over 4150 million.
The creativity instituted in Jordan’s Nike adverts for Air Jordan gifted Nike greater business prosperity. Before Jordan retired from professional basketball, the Newsweek Magazine named Jim Riswold, Nike’s gifted ad copywriter, as one of the most influential Americans. According to Jordan, Riswold and Knight turned him into a dream, and he pointed out that it could have been challenging to achieve what he did if not for his association with Nike. Through Jordan’s adverts and impact on the pitch, Nike took control of the sportswear industry, with the company selling one in every three pairs of athletics shoes sold in the United States. With Nike’s success over the years, many of its competitors felt that the company was run like a cult as the company grew by almost 40% each year. Six years before Jordan’s retirement from the game, Nike’s yearly sales rose from $1 billion to just under $4 billion, with its profit margins rising by over 900%. Surveys on the popularity of sports shoes in the United States also revealed that for 18 – 25-year-olds, more than 77% preferred Nike shoes over other brands. Due to the company’s success, it opened up its doors to global markets with outlets in countries such as China, adding to its success despite the barriers to business prosperity in the country.
After Jordan announced his retirement and invited his circle of friends, including Knight, to his farewell party, Knight began to question his company’s use of Jordan’s image as a popular basketball icon and its impact on his wellbeing. Due to Jordan’s association with Nike, sales from Jordan Air contributed roughly $200 million. However, this bit of sales did not worry Knight, with his greatest concern being the loss of the artistic thing connected to Jordan’s association with Nike. According to Knight, Jordan had shown the beauty of the game, making basketball look like an art. During the night of the ceremony, Jordan pointed out that he chose to retire since he had nothing left to prove. In his mind, the loss of revenue and Nike’s competitors’ impact on the company’s overall sales worried Knight. Whereas Jordan felt that he had nothing left to prove, Knight knew that he and his company still had a lot to prove. As a result, the Nike guys present at the ceremony, including Knight, wanted Jordan to continue being a part of the company even in the background.
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