When it comes to the world of advertising, Nike sure seems to have its pick of the litter. Of the top commercials in the past decade, Nike easily places three (if not more) in the top ten.
Whether its Michael Jordan defying the laws of the space-time continuum in the Air Jordan ad, Brian Urlacher making hits on the ice while Andre Agassi makes web gems for the Red Sox in the “Do Anything” ad, or even Lance Armstrong’s famous, “I’m on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day,” in the “What are you on” ad, Nike has glorified sports and athletes around the globe through their marketing campaigns.
For instance, even their new cricket yards campaign can give someone chills.
“Nike always has a sly way of making anything awesome. Even cricket,” Devour.com describes. Thankfully, Nike’s marketing expertise only revolves around sports. Could you imagine if tobacco companies got their hands on Nike’s finest mad men? It’d be scary to see the new rates of lung cancer.
Nike, Inc. has revolutionized any and every sport ever since Bill Bowerman, the legendary University of Oregon track coach and co-founder of Nike, started making waffle shoes in his home. Now Nike has decided to better the world, not only through simply donating enormous amounts of money like other companies, but also through their products and sport itself. It can all be explained through their newest, greatest ad yet which can be seen on their revolutionary HTML5 webpage, nikebetterworld.com.
The commercial is a Voltron of a bunch of their past commercials; as stated at the beginning of the video, the “film is made from 100 percent recycled ads,” which all come together to pack the biggest punch yet. Through new product designs and community athletic developments around the globe, Nike hopes to make the world and its people better through sports.
Nike took both social and environmental aspects into concern while starting their Better World Initiative. Starting with the green campaign, Nike took to their roots: the shoe industry. Considered a “game changer” in the world of footwear, the new Nike Free TR Fit looks to combine performance, innovation and sustainability in its design.
Maintaining the user’s performance level, the Free TR Fit goes environmentally-friendly by using environmentally preferred rubber, an eco-safe solvent and recycled polyester to reduce the amount of waste. Initially designed for women, the new line of free fit shoes allow the user to “get more out of their workout without leaving a huge environmental footprint. Everyone’s a winner.”
Nike did not just stop at the shoe itself while making footwear safer for the environment; next on the list was the shoebox. While still using 100 percent recycled cardboard, in 2011 Nike will begin using 23 percent less material — this will save approximately 200,000 trees a year.
Moving onto uniforms, Nike’s green initiative premiered on the global stage during the 2010 World Cup. Each Nike jersey was made from recycled polyester in its entirety. This used up to eight recycled plastic bottles per jersey, resulting in a total of 13 million plastic bottles. Instead of ruining the environment by resting at the bottom of some landfill, these same bottles rested on the backs of soccer greats while shaping athletic history.
Finally, in partnership with the non-profit organization Creative Commons, Nike created the GreenXchange. The Xchange is a selfless endeavor that allows other companies to license Nike’s environmentally preferred technology in order to lower their own environmental footprint as well.
In addition to their green initiative, Nike also plans on tackling some of the world’s leading social problems as well going even further than promoting that exercise and sports benefit overall health. Nike traveled halfway around the globe to Soweto, South Africa and built a new soccer training facility. The training center is large enough to give 20,000 South African’s access to top-level training facilities, professional coaching and HIV education. In Soweto, Nike is combating poverty and improving public health.
Nike also supports the Homeless World Cup, an annual soccer tournament with participants from 64 countries, where 71 percent of players will have the tools and support to significantly change their lives after competing. On the homefront, Nike is installing and refurbishing 25 basketball courts throughout New York City, giving thousands of New Yorkers better courts on which to play the game they love.
They have also started a Nike N7 initiative aimed to benefit the Native American community. Diabetes is widely prevalent amongst Native Americans, so Nike looks to promote exercise and fight diabetes by designing a product that is catered specifically to Native Americans. Because wide feet are common amongst Native Americans, Nike designed the N7 shoe series that has a specific design to support a wider foot.
In a world where giant companies throw money at problems and wait for them to go away, Nike has decided to take a different path — through sport. Nike Better World claims that sport “inspires hope, instills discipline, reduces depression and disease, raises self confidence, raises awareness, rallies communities and has even been known to stop wars” (during the 2006 Football World Championship, a civil war in the Ivory Coast came to a ceasefire when their national soccer team advanced to the finals). Nike is pulling out all the stops to prove these to be true. So while others are sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the world to make itself better, Nike went out and just did it.
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