Nike Just Did It.

During my class tonight, I had the pleasure of watching the 2009 documentary, "Art and Copy." (Yes, it was actually an enjoyable documentary..believe it or not!) If you have any interest at all in advertising it's definitely worth viewing, honestly.


Throughout the film, I was introduced to some of the most creative minds in the industry, whose big ideas brought us the original iPod ads (remember black silhouettes/white headphones?), "Got Milk?", "I Want My MTV", and..you guessed it.."Just Do It." Before tonight, I had no clue about the history behind Nike's campaign so it really took me by surprise, and here's why:


The creation of "Just Do It" seemed to have stemmed from a very nonchalant agreement between Nike and Wieden+Kennedy, the agency responsible for the new campaign in 1988. In the documentary, Mr. Wieden remembered saying, "Yeah. That'd work," when discussing the new slogan. Little did this group know that this slogan would become one of the top five campaign slogans of the 20th century. Here, I always thought it was a definitive 'yes' or 'no' when it came to advertising. Apparently 'maybes' can work too!  


And here's another fact for you: The slogan was created with the help of a well-known execution case in which Gary Gilmore said, "Let's do it," right before his execution in 1977. A bit morbid but, hey, it worked for Nike.


So, Nike's new campaign launches in July of 1988 with the hope of selling more athletic shoes. But what happened after that was probably more than the team imagined during their original meetings. People took the slogan and applied it directly to their lives, not just in an athletic sense, but with more personal connections. Yes, it got people to exercise again, but it also made people confident and even helped one man ask a girl to the prom, according to the documentary. It was an empowering message for men, women, and kids. And Nike didn't stop there. 


In 1990, the brand emphasized a message of empowerment through women's advertising, thanks to a few female employees who really took the "Just Do It" campaign to heart. Since 1990, 27 campaigns have been created which targeted women with both athletic and empowerment messages. Now, I'm sure most of the men reading this are thinking, "Here we go again with female empowerment, blah, blah, blah." But the documentary helped me to realize that even the simplest idea, that you may not even be 100% sold on at first, could turn into a much larger, cultural phenomenon. Nike's plan wasn't to preach empowerment, but that's how the public connected with this campaign. So sometimes you just have to go with it..or as they say, just do it.


Here is a women's television ad, launched in 1995, that was featured in "Art and Copy."