Iconic Ads: Nike “Dream Crazy”

“It doesn’t matter how many people hate your brand as long as enough people love it.” Phillip Knight, Nike CEO

Nike’s memorable ads over the past 30 years have always focused on athletes: their discipline, vision, and excellence. Like many non-athletes, I became aware of Nike ads during the running craze of the 1980s. After 76 years, women were allowed to run in the Boston marathon in 1972. Only nine women ( out of 1,219 entrants) ran in the marathon that year. In 1977, Jim Fix wrote The Complete Book of Running and millions of Americans became runners. In 2022, there were 28,580 entrants in the Boston Marathon and 43% of them were women. Along the way, athletic footwear became a huge business. In 1985, the U.S. athletic footwear market sales totalled $5 billion. In 2022, U.S. sales were $14.5 billion. In fact, as of 2021, athletic footwear represented 40% of all shoe sales in the U.S. Maintaining about a 30% market share, Nike is the leading brand of athletic footwear in the world.

The Nike “Just Do It” campaign (Wieden + Kennedy) was launched in 1988 and has driven both the brand’s sales and message. In 2022, the “Dream Crazy” campaign was ranked #17 in The Drum’s top 100 ads of all time.

“As a strategist, this is a particularly enticing and interesting piece of advertising to watch. To start, if one momentarily sets aside some of the controversy around Kaepernick, the execution is very consistent with Nike’s equity as a brand. Nike has built its brand and its relation with consumers with the mantra “Just Do It,” and this legacy is weaved deeply into the execution.” Derek Rucker, Forbes, 6 September 2018