Nike’s #BeTrue Campaign Transformation

In today’s technologically advanced world, small and large organizations are constantly looking for ways to campaign and grab the attention of their consumers. Nike is a well-known international sports conglomerate that is the leader in sports apparel. Nike is known for their digitally appealing, emotionally driven, and effective campaigns. “The company is not only selling products, but they are also selling emotional benefits of the products” (Erkilic, 2018). Nike campaigns focus on creating emotional branding and building meaningful stories to create a loyal fan base. These carefully curated ads evoke certain feelings making Nikes products more unique and meaningful in the eyes of their consumers, which interim builds brand awareness and valuation.

Nike’s purpose “is to unite the world through sport to create a healthy planet, active communities and an equal playing field for all.” Nike’s purpose is centered around finding wellness, sharing equality, establishing a community while responsibly sourcing, and protecting the future planet for sports. The Nike campaign I want to focus on is their #BeTrue campaign. In 2018 the #BeTrue campaign was The Wonder Woman of Vogue. This campaign supports LGBTQIA+ community rights and shows the company’s collaboration with transgender Vogue artist and ballroom dancer Leiomy Moldonado in celebrating pride month. In the Be True campaign Nike honors every voice that advocates for equality and for those who are standing up making a difference. This collection was started by Nike employees back in 2012 seeking to build a diverse community in orientation, identity, and expression. Since the start of this campaign Nike has expanded their support to more than 20 organizations through grants administered by the Charities Aid Foundation.

This Nike campaign has also generated $3.6 million in financial support and in-kind to LGBTQIA+ causes.

The #BeTrue campaign honors athletes who uplift the LGBTQIA+ community and use their voices and platforms for change. The social media platforms that Nike uses for this are in live videos, through Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook feeds. The use of authentic influencers, and hashtags always has this brand and this campaign trending and growing. In 2017 Nike expanded their impact by creating a partnership with Converse, finding more ways to uplift, empower and connect all allies and youth around the world. The slogan for the #BeTrue campaign is “Nobody Wins Alone.” The strategy behind this campaign truly stands out to me because taking a bold stance in this time is a very big risk for a large organization to take. Nike is being a “feisty underdog” by challenging loyalty and introducing a real choice.

The next generation Nike services are speed-to-market and developed in-house systems that are being observed through metrics, traces, and logs. “We needed a metrics platform that would allow for faster aggregation of the information, so we could see the activity much closer to real time” (Nutt, 2018). One of the key challenges that Nike faces in their search for the right metrics platform is finding one that can ingest large amounts of data quickly, which is needed during their launch events and their holiday season. Nike has come up with their own architecture and coding infrastructure to be able to implement and monitor their organization’s consumer-level dashboard KPI’s.

Based off of this week’s readings in my Social Media Management class, in the Four Social Media Goals article, the four goals are:

1. Raising awareness of your brand (through Brand recognition and online influence)

2. Website Traffic

3. Website Visitor Loyalty

4. Conversion Rates

Relating back to Nike each one of these goals are driving forces for the brand and their connection with their consumers. Website traffic and website visitor loyalty are two goals that motivate and drive most of the Nike’s revenue and sales.

In Setting Goals and KPIs for Your Social Media Strategy article, one of the goals that adheres most to Nike is the increase conversions, with two KPI’s: Sales revenue and lead conversion rate. The other goal that relates to Nike is the increases in ROI, with two KPI’s: cost per lead and cost per click. These two specific KPIs and goals are crucial to Nike’s social media and marketing management strategies because of their target audiences and the impact and influence social media has on their consumers.

“Nike probably has one of the most developed brand ecosystems, having developed its brand to partner its customers in multiple aspects of their lives from fitness to political agendas” (Page, 2020). Having this type of relationship and long-term loyalty with the company’s consumers provides more strength and loyalty in a trusted product. I personally own mostly Nike products, not only because of the quality of their product but for everything the brand stands for and supports. This is how Nike sells you seeing yourself as a “high performance individual.”

References

Celebrating Pride and Community. https://purpose.nike.com/betrue-community-2019

Erkilic, Gulsen. (November 2018). 5 Brilliant Nike Campaigns Created with Effective Digital Marketing Strategies. https://digitalagencynetwork.com/nike-digital-marketing-strategy/

Kapp, Stephanie. (July 2018). How to Set Goals and KPIs for your Social Media Strategy. https://marketing.sfgate.com/blog/how-to-set-goals-and-kpis-for-your-social-media-strategy

Kirk, Andrew. (September 2012). 4 Social Media Goals Every Business Should Measure. https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/4-social-media-goals/

Nike Be True Campaign. https://www.nike.com/betrue

Nutt, Adam. (November 2018). How Nike’s Digital Transformation is Monitored. https://medium.com/nikeengineering/how-nikes-digital-transformation-is-monitored- 3c0799b3e443

Page, K. (2020). Social Media Strategy: A Practical Guide to Social Media Marketing and Customer Engagement.

Purpose Moves Us. https://purpose.nike.com/