It’s not always selling products….it also about brand values!

 

Being a jungle swamped with names that have been the rulers for ages, makes it difficult to choose from one among them. Everyone out there wants to toss their products at you, and grab your attention and at the end earn money. But how one does all of this without compromising on professional ethos, makes it a BRAND!

One of the finest exemplar of one such brand is NIKE. Having one of the best-known advertising tagline of all time – ‘Just Do It’, it actually took the world of branding and advertising by the storm. Being a amalgam of just three simple words it landed up creating quite a stir. But it’s more than just a brief phrase; it symbolizes the instinctive approach to a brand building that underlies what great brands do.

Nike’s advertising agency had produced a new television spot for the company in 1987, which wasn’t as well received as the founder Phil Knight had though it would be. It had stunning visuals shot at the University of Oregon, along with the running track where the first Nike shoes were developed. Clips of famous runners, including Steve Prefontaine (who died tragically at age twenty-five), were cut into the ad, with a voice intoned - “It started here. The Fitness Revolution that changed America.”  It was meant to be striking and provocative. And it certainly was. But when it was previewed by more than a thousand sales reps at Nike’s annual meeting, it was not very well received.  Such an unexpected response left the ad agency of this spectacular sports brand working on something brand new, from the scratch.

Two weeks later, equipped with a memo the ad agency returned with a series of simple ads that showed athletes of all kinds doing what they do when on tracks — sweating, straining, running, and jumping. There was also an ad featuring a female tri-athlete. There was one with an eighty-year-old distance runner. Another featured a pro-basketball player. All of them spoke about what they do, and why they do it, with a lot of emotion and conviction. All this came with a simple yet the most impressive line “Just Do It.” It was not just about the sneakers but also about the values that the brand imparts.

With a running time of over a decade, the “Just Do It” ad campaign serves as a prime example of how selling emotion triumphs over selling products. Rather than glorifying their products and the offers it made by giving superior performance and breakthrough innovation, Nike allowed the athletes, both pros and amateurs, to speak to the world about the emotional rewards, in their own words, without ever mentioning the brand name. As soon as the ads first came out, people called and wrote Nike to share how the tagline inspired them to “just do it.” People were voicing out how they took up fitness, and were inspired to change their lives by that three-word emotional appeal. In the years since the campaign launch, “Just Do It” has taken on a cultural resonance that remains unique among brands.

So, counting on the emotional bars, humans beings make purchase decisions based upon how products promise to make them feel. An emotional added value increases the worth of the product many times, and adds it on the wish list. That’s why great brands succeed by seeking intimate emotional connections with customers. Either the product satisfies an emotional need I have or it offers and a goof advertising or branding agency just catches the nerve and weaves a story around it, without hurting any sentiments.