Nike - Integrated Marketing Communications
Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is defined as a strategic business process used to plan, develop, execute and evaluate a series of co-ordinated, measurable, persuasive brand communication programs over a period of time with consumers, customers, prospects, as well as other targeted and relevant external or internal audiences (Juska, 2018).
Timing is key within IMC, and so too is targeting the correct demographic, as if you do not target the right people, the whole campaign will have no success, and even if you target the right audience, you might not reach them as successfully as you could be with correct timing.
In order to explore the benefits and challenges of an IMC campaign, a case study will have to be analysed, in this case, Nike’s ‘Dream Crazy’ campaign starring Colin Kaepernick, and further collaborations with the NFL star, due to their controversial yet successful nature.
The purpose of this report is to discover the benefits to a company of a well-timed and targeted IMC strategy whilst critically analysing the challenges that come with it, and how to overcome these.
Nike’s ‘Dream Crazy’ campaign was spearheaded by NFL superstar Collin Kaepernick, following a major incident involving the star. It all started when he started to kneel during the US national anthem in solidarity and a fight for justice against police brutality to ethnic minorities in the US (Jennings, 2017) and received huge support and commandment off fans, but also backlash from fans across the globe and even off US president at the time, Donald Trump who said ‘You should stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.’ (BBC News, 2018).
This even led to him stopping playing for his team at the time, the San Francisco 49ers but it is not confirmed whether he was dropped by the team or left of his own accord but hasn’t played in the NFL since (Chakraborty, 2020) which is why it was a huge surprise when Nike used him as a cover star for their ‘Dream Crazy’ IMC campaign.
In September 2018, Nike released a poster ad with Kaepernick as the main man as part of their ongoing Just Do It campaign and it shocked the world as no company had endorsed him since, and it said ‘Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.’ And the post amassed over 1 million impressions on twitter (Twitter, 2018) and sports stars such as Serena Williams and LeBron James backed this, but the campaign received mixed reviews from the American public (Guardian, 2018).
Certain members of the public who disagreed with Kaepernick posted videos on to social media of Nike shoes burning and Nike socks with the signature ‘swoosh’ symbol cut out (Guardian, 2018) and #JustBurnIt alongside #BoycottNike trended on twitter because of this (Kelner, 2018). This could be seen as a benefit to IMC campaigns as this is an example of viral marketing. Also, this could be great for Nike as their brand positioning could be solidified to a more socially aware one, possibly gaining customers from other sporting brands such as Adidas because of their ethical work in society, and too being fantastic for Nike’s public relations, which shows more benefits to IMC campaigns, as new customers will spend money and create lots of revenue for Nike which is great for them.
Nike wanted to align themselves with Colin Kaepernick as a political figure rather than him as an NFL player, as a nod towards brand purpose, with Gino Fisanotti, a Nike vice president suggested that the move was about emphasising the wider cultural impact of sport (WARC, 2018) which is a great move for their use of segmentation, as they will be segmenting in a psychographic way (Juska, 2018) with this move through people who have certain social attitudes and lifestyles will be more inclined to purchase Nike products and also more diverse demographics too, increasing Nike’s brand awareness more geographically and could gain new lifetime customers, and cause brand switchers because of this move, as the customer may be more satisfied with Nike’s political and ethical standpoint (Juska, 2018).
Nike’s partnership with Kaepernick did not stop there, they produced clothing and footwear with Kaepernick’s name and also made a decision to donate to Kaepernick’s ‘Know Your Rights campaign’ (WARC, 2018) which further enforces Nike’s ethical standpoint, and them diversifying their means of promoting themselves through Kaepernick shows why IMC’s versatility can be so useful as it taps into multiple different target audiences and demographics, and if the timing is right, the it can also successfully convert people into customers.
Nike also created a video for the ‘Dream Crazy’ campaign, which was narrated by Kaepernick himself, where the video entails people from all walks of life, different demographics and particularly sports stars of ethnic minorities or with disabilities, telling people to believe in their dreams, with a striking line from Kaepernick saying to ‘Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.’ (Guardian Sport, 2019) Just like in the poster. This further solidifies that the benefits of a running theme and idea behind an IMC campaign can have many benefits as the message becomes more powerful, especially when well-executed, as the Nike one was as it won the award for outstanding commercial at the 2019 Creative Arts Emmys (Guardian Sport, 2019).
Applying the AIDA model to Nike’s IMC campaign further highlights how successful an IMC campaign can truly be, starting with attention, through the striking fact of the cover star and message, and captured the interest of the audience with the theme of dreaming big and people of different demographics which enticed certain consumers who may feel they have been deprived of representation within advertising. The action obviously worked as Nike are still the world’s largest and most popular and successful manufacturer of athletic shoes, apparel and other sports equipment (Sabanoglu, 2021). This proves that the overall results from the IMC campaign are more beneficial to Nike than the value of the risk.
The ‘Dream Crazy’ IMC campaign is proved more successful when applying the RACE framework. In terms of reach of the campaign, the YouTube video was sitting on over 21 million views in the space of a week (ACH Communications, 2018). In terms of act, Nike had 2.7 million mentions on Twitter in a week, which was a 1300% increase in leads from the last week (ACH Communications, 2018). In terms of converting customers, within 24 hours, they generated $43 million cash value of media exposure of mostly neutral to positive reaction, with engage fitting with the 31% increase in online sales (ACH Communications, 2018). This is really positive for the long-term future of Nike as even though they have suffered some negative publicity over their political stance, they are attracting the right buyers for them to make their brand image a lot more positive and socially aware, which will bode better for them in the long term rather than staying silent, as customers will remember them acting so well.
Nike utilised social networking very well within this campaign, due to them having such a strong political stance, portraying such an important image, they needed to reach as many people as possible. Social media is great as you can use all the different platforms and it is free to do so, so costs can go towards more important elements such as designing and shooting higher quality content of videos. It also provides a variety of easy access content, and it is simple to target certain demographics as it facilitates conversations between likeminded people, consumers and businesses. This method of IMC which is very popular currently proved to be greatly effective in putting the message across due to the reach it managed and success it led to. Another benefit of social media within IMC is that it is all in ‘real time’ and encourages people to ‘join the conversation’ and Nike did a great job in facilitating that with their strong political affiliations with Kaepernick, and their millions of mentions will only spread positivity and great PR for Nike as their well-timed IMC campaign caused so much success.
However, within any IMC campaign, there are also some potential barriers to success. There are risks whereby consumers not being favourable towards the campaign could act in detriment to the success of the campaign, for example, when people started burning Nike products and #JustBurnIt alongside #BoycottNike trended on twitter(Kelner, 2018) this could have led to certain customers leaving Nike to a competitor such as Adidas or Puma (Craft, 2021). There is no telling as to whether this happened in this scenario, but not reaching everyone who is impressionable within the target demographic of an IMC campaign could be detrimental to the long-term growth of the business. Although for Nike the stock price of the company rose by 31% after the ad campaign (ACH Communications, 2018) and so it has seemed to be great PR for the company.
The costs of an IMC campaign can also be a limitation due to the fact you can advertise on so many channels and platforms, so sometimes a business cannot reach its full target demographic. Despite this, Nike acted effectively through their use of social media to cut some costs using viral marketing, and they are a big enough business to be able to afford huge campaigns.
There is also a risk in timing of IMC campaigns is of paramount importance to their success, as the main mantra for IMC is to send the message to the right people at the right time in the right place for the right reason. In the case of ‘Dream Crazy’ the timing was especially risky in it being two years since the initial controversy, but it seemed to have been played perfectly as ‘Kaepernick and the other players have been playing the long game. The civil rights protests were wildly unpopular when they were occurring… but are now viewed as righteous and essential to our ongoing struggle for equality’ (Armour, 2018) which serves Nike as ethically and politically relevant and helping make a change in turn gaining a lot of customers and attention.
The main limitation for the ‘Dream Crazy’ campaign was the fact that Nike were taking a political stance, and that is always risky in terms of advertising, as it can have overly negative affects with losing of customers if the wrong move is made, but Nike proved that if it is timed well and implemented well to the right demographics, it can be successful, as they are only gaining the consumers that they want in the long-term rather than the customers who disagree and can cause more issues down the line.
In this assignment the author analysed the benefits and limitations of IMC campaigns and linked it to Nike’s ‘Dream Crazy’ campaign, starring Colin Kaepernick; and learned that within IMC, timing and targeting is the key to success, and that although there are some limitations in terms of cost and certain consumers not being receptive but a company on the scale of Nike can combat this easily as it is making the correct long-term decision for its brand.
In terms of the sports industry, politics are a very sensitive issue, but when approached in the correct way, it can be used as a driver to elevate your brand to the next level in terms of garnering reach, engagements and long-term success. Within the industry, there is a wide variety of under representation within ethnic minorities and athletes with disabilities, and this sector can be tapped in to target the demographics that seem to be isolated and ignored. There will always be people not being receptive in sport, usually fans, and acting as a company to make a stand against that behaviour will serve as fantastic public relations and create a customer base that is idyllic for the modern world in terms of a positive thinking one in terms of equality and representation, and a successful IMC campaign is the perfect place to start.
