My assignment for the week was to explore an online branded community and describe my opinions about it. I chose Nike.com. Nike is a dominant product company of the sports industry and I thought it would be interesting to look into their online marketing. When first logging onto the site, there is an pull down list giving me the option to choose which continent’s website to go to. This shows just how far Nike’s reach is beyond just North America.
The site is composed of many videos that have a sort of integrated touch to them. The first video I watched was called “Fate” and included NFL players LaDanian Tomlinson and Troy Palamalu. The video showed their love and talent for football starting at a young age and the eventual collision on the football field between these two all-stars.
The second video I watched was a piece showing the U.S. soccer team and how they are out the prove everybody wrong. The text in the video was very fast and exiting with some great soccer highlights from the team. These ads that I watched were definitely engaging and the ads are successful in motivating or bringing out the passions of a fan regarding sport.
Nike, like most sports marketing companies, uses implicit advertising rather than explicit. That is, their ads do not directly sell their product, but they get the consumer to think about the product by implying a certain moment of a sports experience. The funny thing I notice about Nike is that they do not talk about their brand’s positive attributes in their ads. Instead, they use star athletes and put them in a situation that shows they “leave nothing”.
Although watching these ads do not persuade me to immediately jump in the car and go buy some sneakers, they do somehow bring out a passion in the consumer that implicitly makes them think about Nike’s product. After exploring Nike’s website, it is easy to associate its products with the like-ability of today’s star professional athletes.
This simple logo has been grained into sport culture throughout the world by using implicit advertising. (Image courtesy of teamsugar.com)
0 Responses to “Exploring an Online Branded Community”