Online and offline, Nike did Whatever to find perfect synergy.
What makes a good integrated marketing campaign? Analysts like Marissa Gluck of New York-based Jupiter Communications say it's consistency: "The look and feel must be the same offline and online." Nike "Whatever" campaign not only was consistent, it was groundbreaking--so groundbreaking that major TV networks almost refused to run it.
The ads, which ran both online and on TV this winter, dropped the viewer into an immediate situation: "You're racing Marion Jones. The fastest woman in the world. Look out for the glass door. (CRASH!) What do you do? Continued at whatever.nike.com." When viewers visited the site, prompted by the tagline, they could choose the ad's ending, delivered using San Francisco-based Unicast's Superstitial technology.
"When the networks saw 'Continued at whatever.nike.com,' they panicked. They were afraid people would abandon their TV sets and go to the Web site," says Ian Yolles, director of marketing for Portland, Ore.-based Nike. Initially, the networks refused to use the "Continued" tagline, and the ads ran without it. "Midstream, one of the networks changed its mind and we were able to [use it]," says Yolles. The flap, he notes, only added to the media attention already garnered by the ad.
The ads not only got a lot of attention, they also worked. Sales went up: Mike Wilsky, Nike's vp of U.S. marketing, was quoted in Sports Illustrated as saying that the shoe, the Air Cross Trainer II, "immediately shot to No. 1 in Nike sales" after the ads debuted, outselling the second most-popular shoe by a 10-to-1 margin. In the words of Internet marketing publication ChannelSeven.com's Seth Fineberg, the campaign "did what it set out to do [ldots] Nike increased sales and created yet another branding experience people would not soon forget--at least, in the advertising world."
The campaign was also effective in driving traffic both to Nike's original site and to the whatever.nike.com site created specifically for the campaign. According to New York-based Media Metrix, unique visitors to Nike.com went from 589,000 in January to 852,000 in February, when the campaign reached its height. Whatever.nike.com garnered 524,000 unique visitors in February (Media Metrix's figures for January and March were too small for an accurate sample).
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