Mark Ritson is a former advertising professor, model marketing consultant and an award-winning columnist. He’s additionally the founding father of the MiniMBA in Advertising, a ten-week coaching program for senior managers who missed or have forgotten their advertising fundamentals. Join right here.
The information that Nike is changing its iconic slogan ought to fill entrepreneurs with a big diploma of concern and loathing. There may be, in any case, an elephant’s graveyard of nice slogans dumped by well-meaning however ill-advised model managers looking for freshness, progress and a contemporary “feel and look”.
Few belongings in advertising are as potent or distinctive because the phrases; “Simply Do It”. It sits alongside Tiffany blue, Colonel Sanders and the Golden Arches within the pantheon of iconic model codes. As Professor Jenni Romaniuk would say, the slogan combines the final word mixture of fame (everybody is aware of it) and uniqueness (no one errors it for anybody else).
And after 37 years and a number of other billion {dollars} of promoting, the model and its slogan are virtually inseparable.
So why has Nike—in cahoots with its longtime company Wieden+Kennedy Portland – determined to maneuver to “Why Do It?”. Its new 60-second advert, voiced by Tyler, the Creator, brings you face-to-face with a procession of intense sporting moments, each posing the existential query: Why danger it, why put your self via hell, why try?
Why the shift away from Simply Do It? Didn’t W+Ok invent the unique? Isn’t Nike’s CEO Elliott Hill on a mission to return the model to its unique type? Isn’t Nike smarter than this?
The straightforward rationalization for the swap to a brand new slogan is Gen Z. Within the clichéd handbook of demographic variations, this cohort are portrayed as questioners of custom and vulnerable to anxiousness.
Query every thing
Frankly, I discover such generalisations troubling. Nike clearly doesn’t.
And tweaking its message to maneuver from the Gen X pragmatism of “simply” to the Gen Z existentialism of “why.”
A extra persuasive argument for the brand new slogan is that this isn’t a brand new slogan in any respect. Quite, Nike is quickly taking part in with the present “Simply Do It” phrase by turning it to “Why Do It?” as a result of that’s what manufacturers do when belongings attain maturity.
Even the largest manufacturers have a restricted palette of distinctive belongings to color their presence throughout the market. Through the use of these belongings — logos, slogans, pantones and so on — judiciously and repeatedly throughout all tactical actions, entrepreneurs be certain that their model is salient in retailer, or throughout an advert, or whereas browsing the net.
That’s essential as a result of for all of the speak of goal, tradition and affect, shoppers aren’t actually paying that a lot consideration.
And in case your model doesn’t come to thoughts, all is misplaced.
Icon or relic?
The preliminary position for distinctive belongings – a minimum of for the primary few many years of their existence – is to make shoppers consider the model. That may appear apparent nevertheless it’s most likely the one greatest sin of most American entrepreneurs whose complexity, ambition and creativity obscure the extra elementary problem of making certain shoppers know that it’s you.
However as manufacturers age and their distinctive belongings purchase iconic standing this problem evolves. Manufacturers like Nike face the extra take a look at of not solely coming to thoughts but in addition not trying previous and dusty after they do. All people recognises icons, however additionally they revere them in approach that celebrates their previous greater than their future.
It’s right here that effectively established distinctive belongings current mature manufacturers with a possibility for an all-important magic trick. When manufacturers invert or quickly alter their iconic belongings the entire market notices. Headlines are made. Shoppers do a cognitive double take. And in altering the model asset the market recognises the unique for its heritage whereas additionally seeing the brand new model and its emphasis on modernity.
Change to remain the identical
When Tiffany turned its well-known blue to yellow just a few years in the past. When KFC dressed everybody from Reba McEntire to Jason Alexander as Colonel Sanders. Or when McDonalds bends its Golden Arches on freeway billboards to direct you to its nearest roadside restaurant. Every time the model beneficial properties consideration, achieves salience, reinforces heritage and modernises its picture all in a single semiotic switcheroo.
And Nike is doing the identical factor with its “new” slogan. “Why Do It?” creates consideration. It says one thing recent and completely different. And the change in phrases, paradoxically, ensures everybody thinks in regards to the unique slogan all of the extra. This isn’t the reckless abandonment of considered one of advertising’s nice slogans, it’s a intelligent tactical try to bolster and rejuvenate it.
The lesson for entrepreneurs is a two-fold one. For the primary 30, sure 30, years, your job is to ascertain distinctive model belongings and use them relentlessly within the pursuit of salience. However in center age, simply because the model begins to get dusty, your finest cherished model belongings present an ideal alternative to refresh the model via short-term transformation and inversion.
It’s a difficult model administration problem. The primary chapter is about consistency, repetition and respect. The second shifts to playfulness, creativity and alter. Why do it? As a result of at a sure stage of a model’s evolution it makes good advertising sense.
