Nike- Just do it

In 1988, sportswear brand Nike took the world by storm when they released their ‘Just Do It’ campaign. This campaign set a new standard for marketing and forced every brand to rethink how they went about marketing their products.

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The ‘Just Do It’ campaign featured athletes, both amateur and professional, talking about how they felt when exercising. One of the first videos included an 80 year old marathon runner named Walt Stack who would run 17 miles every morning in preparation for his marathons. The other videos in the campaign contained similar stories all with one thing in common. They were designed to cause an immediate emotional response in the reader, aiming to make them think ‘If they can do that then so can I’.

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In her book ‘What great brands do’, Denise Lee Yohn stated ‘Brand magic lies in inspiring a positive feeling in the customer’. Nike used this principle to near perfection when they released their campaign.

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But how can this be applied to other businesses? Well it is through the use of Empathetic Research, in other words the researching what makes your customers tick and how they react emotionally to your product. You need to be asking yourself, what will my customer be feeling when they buy this product