It’s not often that a single ad generates water-cooler talk these days, but the new Nike spot has left many people as flabbergasted as they were about the Mets’ pitching decisions. And that’s good news for Nike, whose constant challenge is to sell itself as the maverick brand while racking up mass-market sales. It’s a challenge that’s overwhelmed the company at times, including last year, when the company stumbled badly. Sales skidded from $9.6 billion in 1998 to $8.8 billion last year, and its stock, which traded above $70 in early 1997, sank to below $40 last fall. Its advertising bore part of the blame. Notable miscues in recent years included a spot during the ‘96 Olympics that said, “You Don’t Win Silver, You Lose Gold,” and its forgettable “I Can” ads early last year.
But Nike is getting back on its feet, with its profits and stock price recovering. It pumped up its ad budget this year by 46 percent to $350 million. And it has found a more engaging groove, like the Tiger Woods ad in which he bounces a ball on the face of his sand wedge. A spot called “Chicks Dig the Long Ball,’’ with pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine struggling to draw Heather Locklear’s attention away from Mark McGwire, was also a hit. Nike’s new entry, which its creators at Wieden & Kennedy call “Beautiful,” broke earlier this month during the baseball playoffs and will continue for several weeks. Measured by buzz alone, “Beautiful’’ is already a success.
The Nike spot is a compelling example of what it takes to get people’s attention in an age when multitasking is a way of life, and viewers are bombarded with enough ads every day to crash a hard drive (more than 500 commercial messages a day, according to academic research). Marketers’ efforts to break through this clutter has led to a rash of “extreme ads.’’ In a recent Cnet.com ad, for instance, a patient poses a computer question to his doctor, who thinks a rectal exam may yield the answer. In a second Cnet spot, a student is told by his professor to seek guidance for his computer problems from a preserved baby pig. Outpost.com created a stir with an ad in which a gerbil is shot out of a cannon. Allen Adamson, managing director at Landor Associates, a brand-consulting firm, says that such ads suffer from the “Hey-Look-At-Me Syndrome.’’ Such over-the-top campaigns risk offending or confusing viewers. “The most common problem with advertising,’’ says Adamson, “is that you remember the ad but you don’t know who did it.’'
The creators of Nike’s new ad said they had no such concerns with “Beautiful’’ because it evolved as a new twist on the company’s long-running “Just Do It.’’ slogan. The quarter-baked idea for the ad popped into the head of Jeff Labbe, one half of a creative team at Wieden & Kennedy, when he was brushing his teeth. What was it like for hockey players with a lot of missing teeth to brush the ones they have left, he wondered. He mentioned it to his partner, Mike Folino, and they bantered about how players give so much to their sport and wear their injuries like badges of honor. With input from others at Wieden, it was refined further. They would show only athletes who were injured while playing their sport but came back to play again after they recuperated. Some of the casting choices were easy: Olympic skier Picabo Street and her storied knee; Ronnie Lott, the former 49ers star and the pinky tip he had amputated after it was injured in a game. Others came out of a mix of personal connections, casting calls and a little research. John Forse was surfing off the coast of Oregon last year when a shark sank its teeth into his leg and pulled him under. Forse got away and was surfing the same spot a month later. Part of the ad’s latent power is that the rich underlying narratives are left unspoken. “It’s always better if somebody can figure something out for themselves,’’ says Folino. Wieden and Nike figured that anybody who has ever injured himself playing sports could relate to the notion of badges of honor. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’’ Folino adds.
The effectiveness of the ad is also in the eye of the beholder. “It was jarring, but most good advertising is,’’ said Donny Deutsch, head of the Deutsch Inc. ad agency in New York. He liked the premise, the music, and thought the images walked along, but did not cross, the taste line. Rous, who’s 53, admits he’s no advertising expert–he works in Web-related publishing in New York–but because there was no information about who these people were, he was thrown. “My basic reaction was that I was really put off,’’ he said. David A. Aaker, a marketing professor at UC, Berkeley, said he felt the ad risked associating Nike’s name with the squeamishness many people feel when they see severe injuries. There are no Nike products in the ad to divert attention from the injuries. “Nike is all about emotion, and these are the wrong emotions,’’ he added.
At the very least, many viewers may simply lose their appetite for the nachos they planned to snack on during the playoffs. That’s OK with Folino. “They shouldn’t be eating nachos anyway,’’ he says. “It’s bad for them.’’ Then again, bull-riding doesn’t look like such a healthy pursuit, either.
