HISTORY's Moment in Media: The Rise of Nike's "Just Do It" Tagline

The first Just Do It ad for Nike was a TV spot featuring a San Francisco runner named Walt Stack It was made by the Portland Oregon agency WiedenKennedy and the line was written by its cofounder Dan Wieden It would help turn WK into both a global behemoth and a legendary creative shop and it would help transform Nike from respected Pacific Northwest runningshoe manufacturer into the world39s dominant athleticgear brandBut perhaps most remarkably the line quotJust do itquot was inspired by a murdererFirst the briefNike was a successful company well before 1988 But it was a small successful company making only great running shoes Phil Knight its CEO had been a runner at the University of Oregon and together with his coach he39d founded its predecessor company By the mid1980s they39d reached 1 billion in sales by targeting elite athletes and advertising in places like Runner39s World But the market for serious athletes was only so big The mass fitness revolution was happening and Reebok came out of nowhere with more styleconscious sneakers to become the market leader In 1987 Nike was forced to lay off 20 percent of its workforce They knew it was time to pivot to reach a larger audience to move from marketing the product to marketing an idea a lifestyle an emotionThey turned to WK Nike39s longtime ad makers and for the first time were ready to spend significant money on national TV The spots wouldn39t be about toplevel athletes they would be about regular people making extraordinary efforts people like Walt Stack a construction worker who every day ran 17 miles across the Golden Gate Bridge There would be five spots made by five different teams and as the campaign got ready to launch Wieden got worried that they39d feel too disconnected They needed he realized a tagline to bring them all together He stayed up one night and wrote four or fiveThat39s where the murderer comes inGary Gilmore killed two men in Utah in the summer of 1976 Later that year he became the first person in the United States to be sentenced to the death penalty after the Supreme Court reinstituted the practice Like Wieden he39d grown up in Portland although Gilmore had been in and out of jail there After his murder conviction he seemed to be determined to die He chose not to appeal his death sentence In Utah then the two forms of execution were hanging or firing squad and he chose the firing squad because he worried a hanging could be botched When his final day came in early 1977 he replied quotLet39s do itquotThat certainty stuck with Wieden he39d recall later quotLet39s do itquot became quotJust do itquot and his Nike tagline was bornPhil Knight didn39t like the line Wieden has always said Wieden insisted the Nike chief trust him It was the right call Nike was rejuvenated Within ten years sales grew 1000 percent The tagline outlasted that specific campaign and has remained a fixture of Nike39s marketing ever since Former Nike CMO Liz Dolan who started at the company just before the Just Do It launch told The Washington Post in 2018 that each year execs at the company would try to come up with something new and better They never didThroughout the 3990s Michael Jordan just did it Tiger Woods went pro with a Just Do It ad Nike made national news and won an Emmy by making Colin Kaepernick the face of its 30th anniversary Just Do It campaignBy Wieden39s death last October his agency had 1500 employees and offices around the world Having placed his holdings in a trust it will always remain independent Nike meanwhile remains the largest athletic footwear brand in the world with 291 billion in sales last yearClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writersamp160amp160

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HISTORY's Moment in Media: The Rise of Nike's "Just Do It" Tagline

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HISTORY's Moment in Media: The Rise of Nike's "Just Do It" Tagline

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