Nike is an American multinational corporation that promotes and designs athletic apparel, equipment and footwear. Nike is a major sponsor for many professional athletic teams such as the U.S. National Soccer Team as well as many others. Nike is in every social media website there is, and mostly everybody has or has owned something that is from Nike. Nike promotes their product by putting professional athletes in their advertisements, this helps influence consumers that look up to these people buy the product since it gets them one step closer to being like them. This company appeals to people by saying that they will be able to perform better if you buy some Nike cleats or running shoes. All these ads come out in Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and on Instagram since they have their own page to show their new product to everybody. This helps promote their product since there millions of users that use these social media websites.
On the large scale Nike is on every social media network even if they don’t want to be publicised. Nike has taken over the shoe industry influencing males, females, adults, teens, and everything in between. By these influences, also because the social media is available to everyone, nobody is going to stop talking about Nike shoes. Either bad or good publicity both will only do good for Nike because just by talking about them the news is being spread. Based on our sources we conclude that twitter, instagram, and Youtube to be best suited to commercialize their products. Twitter is the best way to inform everyone one of their new products is out. The fast consistent rate at which people retweet and share something new is something to not look past. With Nike’s pregrown popularity there’s no way Nike isn’t using Twitter. The second Nike tweets about a new product the word would spread like wild fire reaching everyone who has a phone and in this case, everyone. Nike, being a company based on style and practicality, can use instagram as a showcase to the world. Instagrams picture base app allows consumers to actually view the product even before the release date, hyping up the product over time until its due. The use of Youtube as Nikes third best selling strategy is very unorthodox because it can be the most expensive. The cost of putting a commercial/ad on Youtube can cost up to 300,000 dollars a day (on the home page). Although it may cost Nike to use Youtube as a marketing scheme they can also use it without actually using it. Fans of athletes that nike sponsor are constantly uploading videos of their gameplay and because nike sponsors them they’re constantly wearing their logo.
In the social media “world” there are five main outlets that most companies use including Nike. Following list will include how and examples of nike using these outlets to maximise their sales, loyalty etc.
-Facebook- Being the biggest social media outlet in the world and having a range from all ages nike utilizes this outlet to do almost everything from news updates, ads and testimonials. Facebook allowing so many comments and likes etc, Nike is able to see feed back from everyone around the world allowing them to tweak and learn from mistakes easier.
-Twitter- Twitter is the more younger and easier to spread social media. Making news and releases so “hyped” and up to date news. Allowing small messages nike must make messages short and straight forward. With Pictures and messages spreading quick they are allowed to use this platform from everything from giveaways, competitions, and releases.
For example the release of the Nike Air Yeezy 2 “Red Octobers” that released out of no where only users following Nike’s twitter account got the notification of the flash release. shoes that was hyped up for over a year with leaked pictures of the shoes on twitter. The news of the release spread like quick fire with shoe magazines and online sources following it sell out in mere seconds and minutes. A prime example of how quickly things on twitter can spread and Nike utilizing it to its potential in occurrence of their shoes and loyal customers who follow them.
-Instagram- Instagram being solely form of media outlet for posting pictures and short videos, Nike uses this platform to release pictures of releases of clothing, shoes and even mini commercials that will interest those who follow. Nike being the most followed apparel brand on instagram with 7,932,338+ followers and the most used hashtags with 33,950,786 post using their hashtag #Nike (totems/list) . A user searching the #Nike in the hashtag section will arrive at millions of pictures that contain nike clothing, shoes, Womens , mens, anything that has Nike product in it. Providing Nike free, unpaid advertisements from everyone around the world. Nike also uploads pictures and testimonials for events and new products.
-Pinterest- Pinterest being similar to instagram people are allowed to use this outlet to search things of interest as well as post pictures, difference being no video but also that on pinterest you are allowed to “pin” stuff which lets the user keep it on their “board” allowing them to go back to see the pics they like at any time. As well as people they follow can see these pins. This allows nike to post a pic and watch it spread from each user although a little slower than most social platforms , pinterest being one of the newest out of the bunch and less users. but it allows users searches to be more specific.
-Youtube- Youtube being the second most used social media site in the world, with thousands of videos being uploaded daily, and videos going viral in mere seconds with millions of views in a matter of hours. Nike uses this to post their commercials and testimonials that can be viewed everywhere in the world daily.
A strength that Nike has on Facebook is the fact that the social teams are obviously lucky in that they have a huge number of athletes around whom they can create and share content, so the global football page displays a huge amount of content featuring the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Andres Iniesta, as well as a lot of product-related posts. creating a lot of people enthusiastic about about buy the new $700.00 soccer shoes. One of many opportunities that Nike offers is one for runners and they responds to a huge number of people to discuss their training schedule and give motivational advice. For example, if you’ve just bought a pair of Nike football boots and the brand then personally responds to you with training advice and a few words of encouragement, then you’re definitely going to consider that brand when you buy sports products in future and may even recommend them to your friends. The threats that i encountered is Nike is exposed to the international nature of trade. It buys and sells in different currencies and so costs and margins are not stable over long periods of time. Such an exposure could mean that Nike may be manufacturing and/or selling at a loss. This is an issue that faces all global brands. Nike being the empire that is know for has very few weaknesses but one is that it does have a diversified range of sports products. However, the income of the business is still heavily dependent upon its share of the footwear market. This may leave it vulnerable if for any reason its market share erodes. Maybe threats and weaknesses don't point as strong as the rest but nevertheless they still point to the recommendation of the brand through the social media sites.
References -
Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter
