Nike is known by many as the face of sports. This corporation represents many athletes worldwide, and it's patented "swoosh" label is on just about everything these days it seems like. With it's hands on hall of fame atheltes from Michael Jordan, who created the subsidary Jordan brand, to the great Jerry Rice Nike is recognizable to the older generation as well as the younger generation. Now-a-days Nike represents the likes of Tiger Woods, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Adrian Peterson, and 92 universities nation-wide. Recently Nike has had to campaign to restore the image of some of their most beloved athletes including Tiger Woods and LeBron James, to note the most famous.
This past summer LeBron James, heralded as the best player in the NBA, held a one hour special on ESPN to announce that he would be "taking his talents to South Beach" and signing with the Miami Heat rather than re-signing with the Cleveland Cavaliers. This infuriated many people and tarnished his image as a "hero" for the city of Cleveland and turned him into the "Villian" of the NBA. Upon the creation of this storm Nike released a commercial featuring James aimed at his doubters, including Charles Barkely, the people of Cleveland, and Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, in order to show that they, Nike, supported James 100% and show that his decision was not easy but one that he made to better himself and his career, same as anyone else would do if faced with the opportunity. The complete version of the commercial, which is about a minute and a half long, is listed below.
Video courtesy of nikebasketball
As you can probably tell there is a lot going on in this ad. I was able to come to the conclusion that this ad contains three main types of advertising strategies. The first concept that is used by Nike is famous person advertising, by using LeBron James as the promoter in this certain commercial. The second strategy in this ad is the use of a plain folks pitch, this is used by the attempt of the ad to reach out to everyday fans of the NBA. The final strategy used by Nike is irritation advertising, they use this because people got tired of seeing this commercial because it was played so much, but that was the purpose of it because by people getting irritated with it that means that it has succeeded in reaching out to the viewers. Personally I feel like the commercial was very successful because sports talk shows were debating this commercial when it first came out because of the controversy it stirred.
This ad campaign was designed by Nike in order to try and re-instill the image of LeBron James after his decision to leave Cleveland for Miami. The target audience of this commercial are NBA fans and people who are skeptical about James. I think that this ad applies mostly to the demographic of younger people who still have not made up their mind about what to think about LeBron James. I don't think that there are any stereotypes or offensive material in this ad, although James does make light references to people who have called him out for leaving Cleveland. This ad had a great effect and I believe it was a great move by Nike to release this commercial because it helped Nike to, not only rebuild one of it's prized possessions images, but also helped to show people that no matter what Nike will stick by their athletes even in their darkest hours. It is definitely a memorable ad because of the amount of fuss that it caused people. When we first were handed the assignment of writing about an ad campaign this was immediately the first one that I thought of, proving that it stuck with people and therefore is memorable to most. I was personally skeptical about what to think of LeBron when he deserted the city of Cleveland to go "Championship hunting", but this commercial helped me to realize that he really does love Cleveland and is thankful for all that the city gave him, but that this was just the best decision for him moving forward. If I was in his shoes I would have probably made the same decision that he did and this commercial helped me to realize that.
Though this ad was not bent on promoting a certain new item or anything, it was rather promoting the brand of Nike and the image of LeBron James. All in all I feel that this commercial helped tons of people realize the same thing that I did when I saw it for the first time. This assignment definitely taught me that there are more to ads than just being annoying billboards, pieces of paper, or commercials, advertising can take on the identity of a purpose, and I find that very cool. To conclude I would just like to raise the question, "What did you take away from this commercial after watching it?"
