Nike Inc. is the number one U.S athletic footwear company and one of the most recognized American brands among foreign consumers. The high degree of recognition is one of the main reasons Nike has been so successful. At the end of 2006, the company operated 23 distribution centers in Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America, Africa and Canada.

However, Nike’s success could be attributed to its concept based advertising campaigns. The company uses a strategy that is often called “image transfer”. Nike traditionally does not place a specific product or mention the brand name but it creates a mood or atmosphere and then the brand is associated with that mood. Nike says “We don’t set out to make ads, the ultimate goal is to make a connection.”

Nike uses much of the celebrity endorsement to create the desired atmospheres. Many popular athletes participated in Nike ads such as Michael Jordan and Jon McEnroe. They aim to infer that real athletes prefer Nike and that perhaps if the potential customers buys the brand, they will play better.

In 1998, Nike shifted to a new phase in its marketing strategy and emphasized more of its product, innovation skills than the jokey, edgy attitude that it displayed in previous years. They realized that their ads need to tell consumers more about Nike’s products innovation and not just athletes and exposure. They also wanted to prove to consumer that they are not just slapping the company trademark to make money. With the launch of the “I Can” campaign, Nike showed fewer of the celebrity athletes who previously adorned its marketing output and showed more product usage than in the previous “Just do it” campaign.

At the same time, competitors Reebok and Adidas recently featured more product-focused ads and were met with a great deal of success. Despite this rearranged strategy, Nike did not back away from innovative marketing. On September 2003, Nike acquired converse Inc. and as a response on August 2005, Adidas confirmed that it had agreed to acquire Reebok.

In 2005, the CEO of Nike stated that developing markets such as India, Brazil, China, Russia and the development of converse presented a big growth opportunity. Nike started to introduce women’s fitness wears and became the number one of the world’s leading on-field performance brands. They have been able to leverage that success by creating an entirely new category of soccer-inspired street footwear.

However, Nike future strategy is the international arena which represents the hardest challenge Nike could undertake. Reaching 2016, it seems Nike became more recognizable outside the United States more than inside as they established this goal in 2010.

One year ago, Nike introduced “the last game” campaign which achieved high success globally with over than 94 million views on YouTube and enhanced its innovation strategies in creating the desired atmosphere through their ads even if they are celebrity endorsing and associating the products to that atmosphere.

Nike and Adidas battle with both companies having huge resources, budgets, creative minds and great managements is one of the fiercest brand competitions globally that is worth following up with the updates.

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