Brand: Nike
Execution: Newspaper (NY Times), Online
Target: Women and Wal Street
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
A full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times. Print only, the ad says:

Thank you, ignorance.
Thank you for starting the conversation.
Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutger’s team story. And for making us wonder what other great stories we’ve missed.
Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak.
Thank you for showing us how strong and poised 18 and 20-year-old women can be.
Thank you for reminding us that another basketball tournament goes on in March.
Thank you for showing us that sport includes more than the time spent on the court.
Thank you for unintentionally moving women’s sport forward.
And thank you for making all of us realize that we still have a long way to go.
Next season starts 11.16.07.

The Nike logo is at the bottom of the page

What Works:
We like this ad because it shows that Nike is not afraid to speak out on polarizing issues, and we believe that the most effective brands are advocates for their consumers. While standing opposite Don Imus in the Rutgers basketball controversy might seem like a safe play, this is a less popular opinion that it might at first appear. Nike shows the best side of the brand by reminding us that the negative (the racist and sexist comments by Mr. Imus) beget a positive (the opportunity to be surprised and impressed by the poise and maturity of his college-age female targets).

Nike also gives us a call to action (”Next season starts 11.16.07″) which ties back to its mission of promoting serious athletes. This newspaper ad is a nice reminder that Nike can mean something when it dares to stand on the edge and that Wieden is still pushing the brand forward.

What Doesn’t:
The New York Times may not be the most courageous platform for this particular stand. And Nike is taking the majority position in a controversial issue. We would like to have seen a brief outdoor campaign. We understand from Advertising Age that this campaign will be pushed out to sports and teen female websites but we have not seen it yet.

Branding Bottom Line:
Nike shows signs of life. Now what to do about the Starbury?

Brand: Nike
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: The Media Establishment
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David

Description:
Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova makes her Nike advertising debut with this spot.  The ad features Maria during her pre-game routine as she travels from her hotel to center court (the spot has been released to coincide with the U.S. Open, the largest U.S. tennis tournament.)  Along the way, everyone she encounters -hotel bellmen, fans and other players – all are singing “I Feel Pretty.”  Sharapova ignores the attention with a concentrated grimace on her face. . As she enters Arthur Ashe stadium, the entire crowd joins the chorus as the song reaches a crescendo. Then Sharapova’s opponent serves and Maria Sharapova hits an explosive shot, letting out one of her famous grunts.  The audience is silenced instantly.  The Nike logo and ‘Just Do It’ appear.

What Works:
This stunning commercial reinvigorates the Nike brand.  We are reminded that ‘Just Do It’ was a revolutionary statement when Nike first launched the tagline and the brand positioning nearly a generation ago.  Nike plays with the stereotype of female celebrity.  Sharapova is an attractive woman and a media star.  The chorus singing ‘I feel pretty’ around her as she makes her way through her life is attempting to marginalize her, to reduce her to the value of her looks.  This spot does a great job of putting us in Sharapova’s shoes.  We feel the opressive weight of the ode being sung to beauty and how it marginalizes Sharapova as an individual.  Even the tennis establishment plays into it as John McEnroe, Patrick McEnroe and Mary Joe Fernandez appear in this spot.

When Sharapova drives her service return past her opponent into the opposite wall untouched, the stunned silence in the crowd mirrors what we’re feeling.  The only sound Sharapova makes in this spot is one of her famous, intimidating grunts.  Without saying a word, Sharapova delivers the most effective possible response to the image-obsessed society she moves through.  Take me for what I am, not what I appear to be, she says.  At its core, this is the essence of the Nike brand positioning.  ‘Just Do It’ means being the most you can be and concentrating on what is really important.

Nike has struggled to maintain a positive consumer image and keep its brands focused as it battles with rivals like Adidas and the media pressure put on a giant company.  By turning its energy back to its core values and using advertising to deliver a timely and important social message, Nike reminds us of the revolutionary company that made athletes and consumers proud to wear the swoosh.

What Doesn’t:
This advertising blog does not miss the irony in this spot - Sharapova was hired as a spokesperson by Nike not just because she is one of the top female tennis players, but because she is very attractive.  So while she works unique well for this campaign, there are still lots of other players who will never have this chance because of the societal values that Nike is taking aim at in this spot.  There is also always some risk associated with making a big statement using an athlete just before she engages in a huge tournament.  Either misbehavior or bad performance could marginalize the effectiveness of this spot.  Fortunately this spot will never look as ironic as the disastrous “Andy Roddick’s Mojo” campaign that Amex ran just as Mr. Roddick was losing his mojo last year.

Branding Bottom Line:
It’s a relief to see Nike back in championship form.

Brand: Nike Basketball (Nike)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Basketballers
Rating: **
Reviewer: David

Description:
Nike Basketball’s new campaign for LeBron James features four spots each of which have LeBron playing four different parts: “Wise” (a greying, bearded, older version of LeBron past his glory days), “Kid” (the LeBron dreamer and wannabe in his pre-high-school years), “All Business,” (the slick-suited image-obsessed self-promoter that we imagine many of these players to be off the court) and “Athlete,” (LeBron himself, more or less). Each of the spots, “Glory Days,” “New Shoes,” “Butter,” and “Celebration,” focuses on a domestic theme and hits comedy rather than court action. In Glory Days, Wise tries to put Athlete in his place with tales of old. In ‘Butter’ Kid dreams of being a great athlete but can’t get dinner rolls off of his mind. In ‘ Celebration’ all four LeBrons show off their dancing while celebrating Athlete’s being the youngest player to reach 4,000 points. In ‘New Shoes,’ Kid brings home a new pair of shoes to show Wise while Business mouths off.

What Works:
Wieden & Kennedy has produced a highly entertaining series of spots which showcase LeBron’s versatility (he’s no Russell Crowe, but he’s not Shaq, either) in four roles. The spots seek to fracture the soul of the basketball player and show the different selves competing for attention. They are well-executed, watchable, engaging and fast-paced.

What Doesn’t:
This advertising blog is written by former brand managers who are in the day-to-day business of training consumer marketers. When we teach advertising strategy, one example of consistency and narrowness of focus we point to is Nike.

Look at Nike commercials, we say, who do you see in them? (Answer - serious athletes, star and ordinary alike.) What are they doing? (They are exercising, working hard.) What is the weather like in Nike world? (If the spot is shot outside it is often raining, miserable and unhappy.) So where is Nike’s focus? (On the serious athlete.) But who buys Nike? (Everyone)

Nike has for years been a perfect example for us of a company that attracts a wide base of consumers by marketing to a narrow audience of serious athletes. This laserlike focus on the serious athlete gives Nike credibility with everyone else, from the casual golfer (those shoes will make me more like Tiger) to the overweight slacker (I look great in these cross-trainers!). By focusing on serious athletes, Nike becomes the expert in performance in the category.

Now Nike is facing a serious challenge from German powerhouse Adidas which has enjoyed a resurgence over the past several years. The two rivals are going head-to-head for the coveted U.S. market. And with this campaign, which diverts seriously from the long-term Nike strategy, Nike has just blinked.

It is pointless to argue the technical merits of this campaign or whether it will appeal to teenage and pre-teenage boys as Nike hopes. This campaign fails because it is bad strategy and endangers Nike’s brand positioning. Nike is not cute, funny, lovable or cuddly. It doesn’t tease and jest and try to be your best friend. Nike is about effort. It is about the last mile, the last shot, the last putt. It is about champions who others can beat in the first quarter but nobody can beat in the last sixty seconds of the game.

By turning aside from this strategy, Nike has committed a serious strategic error and played into Adidas’ hands.

Branding Bottom Line:
We are selling our Nike stock.

Commentary by: David
Issue: Best and Worst Campaigns of 2005 Named by WSJ

Susan Vranica and Brian Steinberg of the Wall Street Journal today named their picks for the best and worst advertising of 2005.

This Advertising Blog will announce the “ThirdWay Awards” - our picks for best spots and campaigns of 2005 as well as our choices for the year’s worst efforts on Monday, January 2^nd. In the meantime, however, we offer you a brief synopsis of the Wall Street Journal’s picks (read the original story here) along with our thoughts and links to our reviews of these spots.

The Best Advertising of 2005 –

1. Dove “Real Women” (Unilever)
• WSJ Rationale – Unilever broke new ground with this campaign which championed the cause of real women with real curves. The campaign created a public dialogue about our society’s sometimes unhealthy beauty ideal and generated a tremendous surge of media coverage for the ad.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ** (Click Here for our review)

While we agreed with the cause and applauded Unilever for supporting the Campaign for Real Beauty (the partner non-profit in these spots), we believed that Dove as a brand was not a good match for the real beauty message. Dove lotion is still a beauty product, intended to enhance a woman’s looks and ends up feeding the self-doubt the campaign seeks to end.

1. Target “New Yorker Issue” (Target Brands)
• WSJ Rationale – Buying out an entire issue of the New Yorker magazine and commissioning original artwork was “gutsy”, generating the kind of attention the retailer is looking for in a medium that has gotten short shrift from advertisers of late. Target showed how it and print can make a difference.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ***** (Click Here for our review)

With one masterstroke, Target sealed its ownership of “Design for All” – a bold step forward in its decade-long move away from Wal-Mart in the mass merchandiser retail sphere. In spite of these years of steady progress in bringing design to everyday life, Target seemed to arrive all at once last year and the New Yorker spread was the tipping point. Suddenly, Minneapolis and not Bentonville looks like the capital of the retailing world – as evidenced by the fact that Wal-Mart hired away a top marketer from Target and started running design-centric advertising (click here).

1. Budweiser “Superbowl Salute to the Troops” (Anheuser-Busch)
• WSJ Rationale – A smart turn to the right from the usually “sophomoric” Superbowl ads from the leading American beer-maker, this “poignant” spot featuring soldiers returning from overseas to spontaneous applause in an airport featured understated branding but a powerful message. Budweiser executes perfectly and scores a big win.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ****

We agree that this spot was perfectly executed. Anheuser-Busch precisely judged the mood of the country and was rewarded with generous press coverage and strong recall for the spot. This was a tactical move, no doubt, and doesn’t build the unique rationale for the brand but does connect to some of the core brand attributes for Budweiser. And most importantly it stood out against some of the cheesier executions in the all-important Superbowl ad war.

1. Nike “Tiger Woods Miracle Shot” (Nike)
• WSJ Rationale – When Tiger woods sunk an improbably chip shot and the ball hung for a second on the lip of the cup with the Nike swoosh featured prominently, it was a moment made for advertising. “With incidents like these, who needs to make actual ads?” says the Journal. They also applaud Wieden + Kennedy’s deft use of humor to set off the ad. The ad ran only briefly to avoid sounding too self-congratulatory.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ***

The actual event generated so much publicity for Nike that the ad seemed unnecessary and was very different in tone from Nike’s normal ad message. However the execution by Wieden is so spot-on that it is hard to argue with Nike’s decision to run the spot.

1. Audi A3 “Stolen A3” (Volkswagen AG)
• WSJ Rationale – Seamlessly using TV, Print, Billboards and even classified newspaper ads, Audi set up a mystery that led 500,000 consumers on a hunt to find the stole A3 which involved e-mail, IM, pagers and all manner of online and electronic clues. 500 A3’s sold in the first week of availability, in this high-profile test of viral marketing.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating – ****

This campaign is a powerful argument for well-designed viral marketing. Volkswagen and McKinney + Silver orchestrated a seamless campaign that had huge awareness among the target audience and lots of targeted chatter, online and off. What surprised us most about the campaign was how invisible it was outside of the target audience. We did not really understand the extent of the cleverness here until we started adding up the media costs for the campaign and realized how much smaller the budget must have been than we would have guessed.

The Worst Advertising of 2005

1. Coke Zero “Chilltop” (Coca-Cola)

· WSJ Rationale – The spot was intended to launch Coke Zero but fell flat because it did not explain the product which confused consumers. It also left Coke open for a successful jab in an ad by Pepsi. The WSJ thinks the problem is that Coke pitches commercials at youth but tries to appeal to older people at the same time.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ** (Click Here for our review)
While two-thirds of the editors of this blog are former Coca-Cola marketers, we must agree that ‘Chilltop’ was a failure. And it will surprise many regular readers of this advertising blog that we do not blame the failure of this spot on Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Our belief is that what could have been an excellent execution for Coca-Cola classic was subverted by the Coke Zero launch. This ad was indeed confusing and in spite of Coke’s assertion that “strong year-to-date sales” for Coke Zero prove the ad worked we noticed that Coke quickly withdrew the spot and started running another campaign behind Coke Zero.

1. Domino’s “Apprentice Placement” (Domino’s Pizza)

· WSJ Rationale - a mismanaged product placement allowed Domino’s to be outflanked by rival Papa John’s. Domino’s promotes the meatball pizza on the show but advertises a cheeseburger pizza on associated spots. Papa John’s in the meantime is barred from buying network advertising on the same show but sneaks in by making local buys in 64 markets advertising a meatball pizza. At the end, Papa John’s stole the show from Domino’s.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - *

When product placements are heavy-handed and the monetary exchange is clearly the only rationale for the placement, they are ineffective. Domino’s managed to turn wasted money into lost revenue by mismanaging the execution and allowing Papa John’s to insert the “Better Ingredients. Better Pizza,” tagline they have litigated so hard for into the middle of Domino’s expensive product placement.

1. Carl’s Junior “Paris Hilton” (CKE Restaurants)

· WSJ Rationale – A terrible example of trying to cater to the “lowest-common-denominator” this spot was bad advertising and bad publicity as it stirred up a firestorm against Carl’s in spite of limited airing.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - *

This advertising blog avoided commenting on the ad and surrounding controversy on the off-chance that it is true that all publicity is good publicity for Carl’s.

1. Lincoln Mark LT Truck “Clergy Lust” (Ford Motor Company)

· WSJ Rationale – Ford made a bad decision in producing a spot featuring a clergyman lusting over a Lincoln truck after finding the keys in a collection plate (and subsequently returning the keys to the owners and writing a sermon with the heading “Lust”). The spot had to be pulled before the Superbowl and never ran despite Ford’s huge investment in production costs.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ****

We agree with the WSJ that this spot was in poor taste and would not have been effective for Ford had it run. But Ford made the right decision in pulling the spot and did so quickly and without triggering a national scandal. While the advertising was not good, we believe that this was a good example of successful public relations. Anyone can make a mistake but to deal with it effectively is the sign of character.

1. US Department of Education “Planted Stories on No Child Left Behind” (US Government)

· WSJ Rationale – When the government hired Omnicom’s Ketchum group and they hired conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and he wrote favorable stories on No Child Left Behind he hurt his reputation, Omnicom’s and that of the Bush Administration.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - *
This advertising blog believes that the real problem here is not that the government engaged in planting stories but that in doing so they were engaging in standard PR industry practice. We believe that many current PR practices are creating great risks for valuable brands and that the day of reckoning may be soon. But that is an issue for the new year.

Brand: Nike Women
Execution: Print
Link: Click Here , Click Here and Click Here
Target: Real Women
Rating: ***
Reviewer: David
Description:
Nike follows Dove’s Real Women campaign as it gains momentum. (See our July 12th blog on the Dove campaign). This print campaign has three pool-outs, each featuring a different part of an individual woman’s anatomy which is does not fit the current ideal of beauty. The butt, shoulder and knee each have an ad, each featuring a women talking about why she loves her body.

What Works:
We were critical of the Dove campaign not because of the execution (which was excellent) or the intent (commendable) but because we felt that the advertising idea (women come in all shapes and sizes) wasn’t a natural fit for skin lotion (since all of the images seem to convey body size and shape, not skin type). And because - as you’ve heard elsewhere - when a beauty company delivers the message there is still a not-so- subtle undertone of ‘you need our product to be complete’ hiding amidst the self-empowering images.

Nike works much better as a carrier for this idea. Nike products are already about empowerment. And as a brand, Nike does not discriminate between ugly and beautiful people - beautiful to Nike is a sweating runner pounding through the mud and rain. So the ‘real women’ theme is a natural fit for Nike and complements rather than reverses its existing brand strategy.

The copy for these ads is excellent, particularly well-chosen jabs at the status quo like, “My Butt is Big. And that’s just fine. And those who might scorn it are invited to kiss it.” The message may be one that Dove and others are delivering but the attitude is pure Nike. That makes these ads ownable for Nike.

We also like the way Nike has integrated the text and graphic images in this spot, with the narrative playfully bending around the woman’s knee, the line spacing jostled by the implied motion of her joints.

What Doesn’t:
There is an inherent problem with a brand built on individualism becoming a quick follower of a social trend. Nike risks being seen as following Dove by developing this campaign so soon after the buzz from the Dove ‘real women’ campaign has become noticeable. Even though Nike’s execution fits the brand much better than Dove’s did, Nike still risks losing a little bit of its luster as an innovator.

The other potentially significant problem with these ads is the almost nonexistent branding for Nike. We don’t believe Nike has created something that is so unique or recognizable that it is acceptable from a brand stanpoint to bury the logo and the tagline.

Branding Bottom Line:
Nike helps women with sensible advertising. Kick it out a little more next time.