I don't understand why everyone doesn't use Wieden + Kennedy for their TV ads. The commercials they create for Nike are simply the best on television.

For the last couple of days, since I wrote my defense of eyeballs rant, Olivier Travers and I have been arguing via email about brand advertising. He is in that camp who thinks it's largely a waste of money. Myself, I would agree that most brand advertising sucks, and much of that money is wasted. But it's just a question of creative (same holds true for direct marketing). Nonetheless, I do firmly believe that good brand-style advertising can indeed drive sales and profits.

9/18/02 UPDATE: Rob Poe points out that Business 2.0 recently had an article examining Nike's ads in detail.

Nike, towit, is the number-one sporting goods brand in the world. Slave labor aside, I can think of no reason more likely to responsible for those sales than the more than $1 billion they spend annually worldwide on sponsorships and advertising (on sales of ~$10 billion).

If you haven't yet seen their new ad titled "Before," look for it. Sixty seconds of fast-edited clips of athletes getting ready to begin their events, accompanied by the sounds of an orchestra warming up, building through excellent editing to a peak of great suspense, closed with the inevitable pay-off: "Just do it."

Brilliant. I believe it's the most beautiful ad I've ever seen. In addition to the superb editing and photography of the kind we've grown to expect from their ads in recent years, after all these years of using that same slogan they make it as fresh and powerful as if the it were first time they've said it. Athletes getting ready, getting ready, getting ready, getting ready, getting ready... "Just do it." It's like, they've replaced "ready, set, GO!" in our minds with "ready, set, Nike."

Their brand is vritually synonymous with sports. Few companies own their competitive categories in the minds of consumers as effectively as Nike does sports. Buying a sports shoe of a brand other than Nike is to take a position in reaction against the obvious fact that Nike is the number-one name: either based on price, or defiant loyalty to another brand, or protest against their business practices, or product comparison research you've undertaken because you're a shopping geek, or whatever. But all things being equal, the average person with none of those predispositions walks into a shoe store because his old sneakers need replacing, he's liable just to go with Nike, because it's the number-one name in sports. That's not the wishful thinking of a brand bigot, that's based on Nike's sales revenues, nearly double its nearest competitor's.

This version of the new commercial, on Ads.com, does not do it justice in its postage-stamp proportions, but you can get a glimpse. (Brilliant as Nike is on TV, it's beyond me why it doesn't feature a gallery of its ads on the site. Just give them all away with in all e-video formats. What on earth is the logic of not wanting people to freely share your advertising? Plaster your URL on all of them. It's called viral marketing, pull advertising, e-marketing nirvana. Your ads are so good that people want to watch them, yet you deny them the pleasure. Makes no sense to me.)
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