Sunday, February 18, 2007

Thot bubbled #39

What do you people think of this decision? And can someone find me some reading material that analyses this decision? I've been looking, unsuccessfullly. Meanwhile, your thoughts would be quite interesting. Here's my first-take on it.
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4 comments:

Kaj said...

hi.. I wasn't sure which post to publish comment on, I'll go for both. Here is prolly easier for debate. my take:

I think the nike = swoosh. It's intrinsic. Remember how their employees used to ge the swoosh tattoo? not the word 'nike'?

Incidentally, people who don't know what the swoosh is? Are they people who would buy nike at those stores? I doubt it...

February 18, 2007 at 8:44:00 PM GMT+5:30
meraj said...

just a swoosh is a smart approach...as kajal puts it, people who know nike know the swoosh and vice versa.

this brings me to another shoe story. i definitely dont like reebok turning into rbk...loses its character...am anyway, not much of a brand person, but rbk? come on...

February 19, 2007 at 10:47:00 AM GMT+5:30
blaiq said...

UberM, I found this post using Google Blogsearch. What's interesting is that all 11 people who had taken the survey at the bottom think it's the right decision - and not just with respect to Nike.

FiNK has a vaild point about people who don't know about Nike.

In addition to that, I'd like to add that we tend to assume that people follow a linear route to discovering/ learning about new things in our life - including brands. Which isn't true at all.

The approach that Nike is using probably falls more under Faris Yakob's Transmedia approach. In this approach, a single non-linear evolving brand narrative benefits from different self-contained elements/narratives in different channels by forcing people to put the whole thing together in our minds. This also has the additional benefit of making people talk to each other and try and fit the puzzle together - pooling what they individually know.

Nike can also afford to do this because they are already embedded in popular culture and significant parts of the narrative are available all around us. In my opinion, Hershey's example (from this discussion) is more courageous than Nike's.

And finally, UberM, you use the word evolutionary in your post to describe the move. That word in my opionion is appropriate in more than one way. Evolution (of the Darwin/biological kind) isn't always a simple linear move towards more complex species. In actuality, there are more deadends than pathways, and several backtrackings and re-inventions.

So, it's not a one-way street. If the experiment fails, Nike can always go back. Which is why the risk is even more worth taking.

February 19, 2007 at 10:49:00 AM GMT+5:30
Subramaniam Avinash said...

Very nice tip-off Blaiq. Thank you. Nice views too.

February 19, 2007 at 1:21:00 PM GMT+5:30

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