Dan Wieden, creator of the iconic tagline ‘Just Do It’ for Nike, passed away on September 30. Wieden was the co-founder of Wieden+Kennedy, that eventually became the world’s largest independent advertising agency. The agency went on to create some iconic campaigns for McDonald’s, KFC, P&G, Old Spice and Honda, amongst others, but the campaigns it did for Nike reached epic proportions.
FROM POPULAR TO CULT
At $44 billion annual revenues and valuation of $143 billion, Nike is a global sports footwear, apparel, accessories and services behemoth. The slogan ‘Just Do It’ coined by Wieden in 1988 turned the company’s fortunes and took it to dizzying heights. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that the ‘Just Do It’ campaigns, along with the famous ‘swoosh’, were instrumental in Nike being elevated to a cult brand from the popular brand that it already was. In pure business terms, it catapulted Nike to the stratosphere and further increased its share of the North American shoe business from 18% to 43% and from $877 million to $9.2 billion in worldwide sales within a decade of its launch, leaving its main competitor Adidas far behind. The ‘Just Do It’ series had provided the perfect foundation that allowed brand managers at Nike to put the brand much beyond the reach of its competition in the 1990s. The line gave them tremendous flexibility to put out a range of advertising with a spectrum of themes which inspired social conversations – women’s empowerment, inclusion and diversity, hope, universal justice and so on. This also enabled them to work with the who’s who of the sporting world – Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, LeBron James, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kevin Durant and so on.
A TIMELESS TAGLINE
The simplicity, minimalism, bearing, persuasiveness and sheer tenacity of the slogan ‘Just Do it’ makes you feel why someone hadn’t thought of it until Wieden did. Similarly, the charm of the line also lies in its everyday appeal – relatability, and if I may add, vagueness. Everyone can relate to it – across age, gender, income groups, whether related to sports or not. Whether you use it for a belligerent child or co-worker to give instructions or to coerce yourself to take the plunge into something which you had been irresolute about - ‘Just Do it’ works… in each case, it is just as impactful. The tagline carries itself across generations and is timeless. Despite the world around them changing at a fast pace, Nike brand managers never felt the need to ‘upgrade’ or ‘refresh’ the tagline with changing times. It has remained the same ‘Just Do it’ for the last 34 years. In fact, Nike celebrated 30 years of the successful run of the ‘Just Do it’ campaigns in 2018 with a ‘Dream Crazy’ video. The video had narration by American civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick, and some very inspirational lines – my favourite being “Because what non-believers fail to understand is that calling a dream crazy is not an insult, it’s a compliment… So don't ask if your dreams are crazy. Ask if they're crazy enough.”
THE WISDOM OF WIEDEN
In an interview, Wieden had let it out that the tagline was inspired by the last words of a criminal on death row, who was facing a firing squad when he said, ‘You know, let's do it’. It’s amazing how a phrase that had such a macabre origin went on to become a supremely inspirational phrase for generations together. In fact, when Donald R Katz wrote a book on the journey of Nike, the corporate organisation, he chose the same name – ‘Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World’. He went on to mention that the spirit embodied in the ‘Just Do it’ tagline percolated into the heart and soul of the company’s employees so much so that they thought of themselves as change agents.
Nike was Wieden+Kennedy’s first client in 1982 when the agency was formed and it is quite ironic that Phil Knight, founder of Nike, once told them that he ‘didn’t believe in advertising’. Little did he know then that he would be the beneficiary of one of the most awe-inspiring advertising taglines ever created in history.
The creator of that epic line is now gone but the legacy that he created will live on. The main Wieden+Kennedy website (https://www.wk.com/) currently redirects to a tribute page (https://www.rememberingwieden.com/) for him – his life, his family, his work, his feats are all there to inspire budding admen. The page scrolls to a quote from Wieden himself: “Excellence is not a formula. Excellence is the grand experiment. It ain't mathematics. It's jazz.” RIP, Dan Wieden.
(The author is a senior professional in the corporate sector and writes on varied topics that catch his fancy. The views expressed here are his own. He tweets at @sandeepbangia)
