Candace Lee & Nike

I read Candace Lee’s blog, and I have found many of her ideas to be interesting. Specifically, Candace’s blog entitled “Nike Takes on March Madness” is especially fascinating.

“Nike Takes on March Madness” closely examines Air Jordan’s and Nike’s advertising campaign during the NCAA March Madness Basketball Tournament. The advertisements ran throughout the tournament and mainly featured high-profile and memorable games from past tournaments, while focusing on the heartbroken fans from the LOSING side of each memorable match-up.

Candace brings up an interesting point: that the purpose of the commercial campaign is not to show a specific product or sell anything in particular, but its main purpose to simply invoke emotion in the consumer and connect. Candace also notes that while the Nike advertising campaign and the Song Airlines advertising campaign had the exact same goal (use commercials to generate emotion and connect with the customer on a deep level), both companies went about accomplishing this goal in opposite ways. Nike’s campaign raised several negative emotions, while Song attempted to raise positive emotions; ultimately Nike’s commercials were much more successful.

I would like to add more about Nike’s strategy of appealing to negative emotions for their commercials. It is important to note that the March Madness tournament involves 65 teams, but only one champion. Throughout the tournament, 64 teams feel the agony of defeat after a loss and go home without a championship, while each year only one team ends their season and their tournament on a win. The fact that 64 out of every 65 teams is guaranteed to lose every year means that negative emotions are much more common (and therefore relatable) during tournament time. Also, the fact that no one team wins the championship every season means that EVERY fan has felt the heartache of a loss at some point, and appealing to that negative emotion reaches every basketball fan. In contrast, if Nike were to only focus on the winning teams and their epic championship runs then Nike would end up alienating entire groups of fans whose team has never won a National Championship, and might even create resentment of rival fans .

Candace is right- Nike made an absolutely brilliant move by focusing on the negative emotions associated with the tournament rather than the positive emotions.

However, Candace takes an issue with the “Ray Allen” commercial and states that it does not “fit” with the rest of the campaign. I disagree with Candace on this issue. I think the “Ray Allen” commercial is a nice addition to the series, and even though it does not follow exactly the same format as the others in the campaign (highlighting a single memorable performance) I believe that it still follows the spirit of the campaign. The “Ray Allen” commercial features a factory owner who doesn’t hire any workers named “Ray”- presumably due to the fact that Ray Allen ended his team’s tournament run. Although the commercial does not resonate specifically with fans of a certain team (the issue Candace appears to have taken issue with- the fact that the highlighted game and teams are not memorable), it does focus on a relatable idea in college basketball that many fans can associate with. Also, it is important to note that even the most avid fans may not remember specifics from games past of teams that they do not care about or follow (no fan can possibly watch every game, every year), but Nike is selling the idea of the games and heartbreak of loss. Every fan can connect with that- regardless of their knowledge of basketball history or which team they follow.