Nike Marketing Strategy free essay sample

The company truly came from humble beginnings as Knight sold their products from his car during track meets. During that same year the company reached a healthy profit of $8,000 and in two short years Bowerman and Knight opened its first retail store along Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica, California. In 1971, Blue Ribbon Sports severed its ties with Onitsuka Tiger and decided to create their own line of footwear. In the summer of the same year, they released their first shoe which carried the famous â€Å"Swoosh† design called Nike, a name inspired by the Greek goddess of victory.With the popularity of their first sneaker, Blue Ribbon Sports released its first line of Nike Shoes in 1972; however it was not until 1978 when the founders officially named the company Nike. Nike’s first original product was derived from Bowerman’s â€Å"Waffle† design. Bowerman conceived of different outsoles that would grip nicely to the new urethane track of the Hayward Field of the University of Oregon. We will write a custom essay sample on Nike Marketing Strategy or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Then, one Sunday morning, he got the ingenious idea of pouring liquid urethane into his wife’s waffle iron.This experiment became the forerunner of Bowerman’s famous 1974 Waffle Trainer. After just 16 years in the biz, Nike dominated over 50% of the market share in the US athletic shoe market. As a result, Nike went public in December 1980. The company attributes its marketing success to its â€Å"word of foot† (taken from a Nike slogan in the late 1970’s) style of advertising, rather than expensive television commercials. In October 1982, the company aired its first national television ad during the New York Marathon broadcast. The ad was created by Wieden Kennedy, an agency based in Portland, Oregon. Dan Wieden, co-founder of the ad agency, was the one who thought of Nike’s famous slogan, â€Å"Just Do It,† which was used in a 1988 Nike campaign. The slogan, considered as one of the top five slogans of the 20th century, debuted in print media in July 1, 1988 on the pages of the San Franciscan Walt Stack. Retired Basketball icon Michael Jordan with his world-famous Air Jordan shoe. Now, Nike is the leading authority in sports equipment.Nike products range from track running shoes, jerseys, shorts, and base layers for athletes from different sport disciplines such as basketball, baseball, football, volleyball, tennis, golf, cycling, track and field, wrestling, lacrosse, and cheerleading. By diversifying their product line, the company was able to peruse a wide range of athletic sponsorships for a different array of sports. Some notable Nike endorsers include basketball legend Michael Jordan, tennis champion Roger Federer and golf star Tiger Woods.Nike has also produced urban fashion clothing which has been popular with the youth. Recently, Nike has collaborated with Apple to come up a device which monitors a runner’s accomplishment through a radio device in the shoe which networks with the iPod nano. Apart from popular products such as the Michael Jordan line, Nike has come up with special shoes for extreme sports such as skateboarding. Also the company’s innovative attitude toward footwear design and composition continues to flourish with Nike’s latest development of weight reducing components: the Flywire and Lunarlite foam.