Introduction

Nike Inc is a multinational corporation based in America and deals with the development, design, marketing and selling of apparel, equipment, footwear, services and accessories. The company has grown to be among the largest suppliers of athletic shoes and manufacturer of sports equipments all over the world. In 2012, the company had a revenue of more than $24 and employed more than 44,000 employees (Carbasho & Westport, 2012). The product involved in this case study is women’s footwear. There is no specialization since it involves shoes of different types. This is because the advertisement targets women of different age groups, and they exhibit different preferences and tastes. The unique selling points of the Nike campaign are routes with many athletes, gyms, magazines with women features, workshops and social media. All these points aim at reaching the female runners out there.

This campaign is unique in its own way. Competitors have not being able to generate such a campaign in their promotional aspects. Most of them use a general approach and do not try to target women specifically. A company like Adidas is well known for using celebrities in its marketing campaigns. It uses more of male celebrities compared to the female ones. Asics on its part is trying to replicate what is being done by Nike. They are developing a Facebook application linking its consumers with other offerings. They are also more into print adverts and TV commercials.

Through the campaign, Nike is trying to overcome the perception that Asics is the running specialist when it comes to female athletes. The company is doing so by trying to show that what competitor can do, they can also execute it better.

Objective

The communication objective is trying to eradicate the loyalty given to Asics. Most female athletes seem to recommend the Asics brand to their colleagues and friends. Nike aims at eradicating this perception and using it to its advantage. Through the campaign, Nike will be able to show why it the best compared to the competitors. As a result, female athletes will be able to endorse it. The company will use the endorsement as a promotional opportunity. There will be an essence of personal selling from the consumers obtained through the strategy. They will be talking about Nike in their running activities hence building a name for the company. Other consumers will take the initiative of trying out the products, as a result.

Target Market

During the campaign, Nike segmented its target market in the best way possible. Segmentation is a strategy that entails dividing a broader target market into several subsets that have similar needs or wants (McDonald & Dunbar, 2012). Nike does not target the athletes’ world, but targets the female world in general. The company has segmented the female market in youths and adults. In this campaign, segmentation has been based on tastes that these consumers have. For adults, the campaign targets physical running communities. This is where you are likely to find most of these people. They are more involved in fitness sessions and a variety of workshops. These are among the ways that they use for interaction purposes. On the other hand, the campaign targets the youth through the digital community. Use of social media and other print adverts is the key to reaching this group of consumers. These are their sources of obtaining information and sharing what they have. Facebook has been devised as a strategic media since interested parties will share the prospects with thier colleagues and friends. Nike’s campaign is paying more attention to the youth. This is evident based on their recruitment of Carly to bring the youthful voice in the campaign. This is expected since the youth bear future responsibilities in the athletics world.

Brand Equity

Brand personalities displayed by this campaign are excitement and sincerity. Excitement comes in on the aspect of targeting youthful women. This has been supplemented by Carley, a youthful athlete to spearhead the operation of bringing together the youths through the social media. It creates some form of hype on the target market and strengthens Nike’s brand preference among these consumers. The targeted youths also get to be spirited since they can see one of their own in the leading pack. Issues to do with sincerity come along with the ambassadors placed in various target points. These ambassadors are related with the target audience in one way or another. When they are sharing their experiences with the Nike footwear, the audience tends to be interested. This is because they view them as being genuine based on the relationship ties that exist. To them, they do not see any reason why these ambassadors would be lying to them. This creates the demonstration effect. It is a situation whereby consumers are in need of trying out what their neighbors are doing (Estepa, 2008).

Brand equity realized during this campaign is an indication of the effectiveness of the brand personalities. Favorable measures of brand equity that can be analyzed include preference, knowledge and financials. On financials, the case study showcases that Nike was able to hit its target sales with ease. The sale even exceeded the expectations. Knowledge regarding the brand is vivid through the number of people that came out to form the community. 54,762 female runners was quite a huge number.   Preference on the other hand is based on the attitude that the consumers developed after the campaign.  90% of the female runners that were surveyed through Facebook, intended to participate again in the following year. This was an indication that they had developed a liking for the product. As a result, it would affect their preference on future purchases (Aaker, 2009).

Campaign Analysis

Nike integrated the campaign in the best way possible. This is outlined through its segmentation aspect. The company seems to have a good understanding of the target market.  For the adult females, the company opted to visit points of convergence for female runners. Most of these people usually work as a group in order to derive motivation. It would have been easy to convince them in such situations. Using social media to attract youthful females was also very effective. These consumers spend most of their free time on social media. Using this approach would help reach quite a number. It also created an effective platform for enhancing word of mouth advertising. Through the social media platforms, youthful females tend to share a lot with their friends on things that bring excitement to them. Using a youth to run the campaign was even more appealing. Some form of integration was likely to develop.

Despite this success, Nike would also have used celebrity advertising in the campaign. This form of advertising would have worked best on TV commercials. Celebrity advertising is very effective in enhancing brand equity. This is because it brings about brand personalities of sophistication and competence. On competence, celebrities are very influential and people want to be associated with them at all times (Green, 2012). People like to go with their consumption behaviors since they view them as being superior based on their success. Sophistication comes in with the prestige that they bring.  They build the company’s brand in that people tend to view it as being valuable. This increases the number of consumers hence the sales.

Nike’s reliance on co-creation to increase engagement paid off. Among the strengths of this approach is based on the relationship ties that existed between the ambassadors and the target audience. The audience trusts these people and hence is willing to accept their advice. However, there is a weakness in this approach in that they might relay the wrong information. People tend to perceive differently and hence pass undesired information to the target audience (McDonald & Dunbar, 2012). This might work as a turn-off hence ruining the campaign to a certain level.

Conclusion

The campaign was successful based on the attributes displayed by the company. Among them was the segmentation process. It helped in identifying the needs of all target female consumers. Age differentials are very effective in segmenting such a market niche. It defines the tastes since consumers tend to segregate themselves into groups of similar consumption behavior. Using female personnel also contributed to the success of the campaign. For many consumers, it is easier for them to asses a product when it is presented by their counterparts. The approach gives them the belief that whatever is being promoted can be replicated in the real world.  The ambassadors used were also very effective. It becomes effective to communicate to people when individuals associated with them are involved. These people understand them and are aware of the best approach to use. The audience on its part has some form of trust hence are willing to listen.

References

Aaker, D. A. (2009). Managing Brand Equity. New York: Free Pr.

Carbasho, T., & Westport, C. (2010). Nike. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood.

Estepa, A. (2008). Exploring Brand Personality Congruence. Michigan: ProQuest.

Green, J. (2012). Advertising. New York: Rosen Central.

McDonald, M., & Dunbar, I. (2012). Market segmentation how to do it and how to profit from it    (Rev. 4th ed.). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Shankar, V., & Carpenter, G. S. (2012). Handbook of Marketing Strategy. Cheltenham: Edward   Elgar Pub..