8.8 Controversial advertising of Nike
8.8.3 Consumers’ measurements
The measurements of Kaepernick's advertising campaign brought Nike both posi-tive and negaposi-tive outlooks. The "Nike Dream Crazy" ad generated over 65 million views in five days via several social platforms. Kaepernick also gained much social attention when he announced the new Nike partnership during the campaign. The reason is that Nike also partnered with NFL, which had ongoing sue against Kaepernick. Therefore, his new contract with Nike showed that the brand is willing to stand out with its athletes during political issues. According to a Breal.TV report, the advertisement brought over $43 million worth of media marketing during the first day of airing. (Kemp, 2022)
However, along with positive outcomes, Nike faced many backlashes from other media outlets. On Twitter, Nike has become the top trending term. Many social media accounts posted photos and videos promising to destroy Nike products with
hashtags #BoycottNike and #Justburnit, with customers burning Nike gear or cut-ting Nike logos off their socks. Even US President Donald Trump twitted "What was Nike thinking?" on his Twitter. As a result, Nike's stand with Colin Kaepernick grabbed a ton of attention. (Balkam, 2020)
Figure 14. Nike's online sales during Labor Day week, 2018 vs 2017 (Edison Trends)
The campaign brought a considerable impact on Nike's finance. The advertisement was aired on Labor Day, September 3rd, 2018. Regarding Nike stock, on the first day, it decreased by roughly 3.2 percent due to the hashtag #BoycottNike trending on Twitter. However, Nike's share reached an all-time high on Friday afternoon, closing at $83.49. In the longer term, Nike stock had surged 33 percent that year as Wall Street bet the brand might beat the negative publicity. Nike's online sales increased 31 percent from September 2nd to September 4th, nearly double the company's sales in the previous year's same period. Stock recovery brought Nike's market cap up to $133 billion. (Berr, 2018)
Figure 15. Nike stock chart (Berr, 2018)
The consumer response process to Nike's campaign can be illustrated by the pro-posed response model of the controversial advertising in figure 16 below.
Figure 16. Nike customer response of Colin Kaepernick advertising campaign
As a result, that controversial advertising campaign showed how effective Nike's advertising strategy is. At first, the brand chose the most polarizing player to bring
positive and negative opinions among its customers. The controversial figure, with his ads, successfully brought much attention to Nike via social media, which made the brand the most trending company during the campaign. The subsequent ef-fects helped Nike stock reach an all-time high and witness a massive rise in market value. However, it is a gambling method for every company since it may increase the number of opponent audiences. That is why famous brands like Nike, Pepsi, and Dove use controversial marketing; as Nike chief executive officer Phil Knight said: " It does not matter how many people hate your brand as long as enough people love it." With smaller and weak companies, they might not use this strategy since the result would be mainly negative.
9 CONCLUSION
Nike is one of the biggest brands in the world. The competition is very intense in the sports equipment market with several famous names like Adidas, Puma, and Under Armour. Therefore, each company wants to have the best competitive ad-vantages possible. They all want the consumers to be interested in their products, not the opponents. Controversial marketing has been used as a part of Nike's mar-keting management since the beginning of the brand.
Controversial marketing is being witnessed more often, especially in the social me-dia era. The controversy in this method may polarize the audience's opinions due to the political and social stories behind it. As a result, it will accumulate much attention from the public and consumers in the first period. Initially, this method may negatively affect the brand's image and profits due to the coming backlashes.
However, the advantages may outweigh the negative impacts if the brands are strong enough and have loyal customer groups. In Nike's case, the brand used con-troversial advertising to stand out with its athletes in the middle of political and social issues, which received a lot of support and praise from African American communities, who have the largest portion of Nike's sales.
The main reason for Nike's success when choosing controversial marketing is its reputation. With its reputation, Nike has a lot of famous athletes and celebrities who allure a significant number of consumers for the brand. Controversial adver-tising helped Nike gather much attention and increase its profits quickly, although it polarized its consumers and the public. Therefore, controversial marketing might not work with smaller and weaker brands because the outcome is usually harmful.
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