Why Did Nike Do It?

Change to stay the same

When Tiffany turned its famous blue to yellow a few years ago. When KFC dressed everyone from Reba McEntire to Jason Alexander as Colonel Sanders. Or when McDonalds bends its Golden Arches on freeway billboards to direct you to its nearest roadside restaurant. Each time the brand gains attention, achieves salience, reinforces heritage and modernises its image all in a single semiotic switcheroo. 

And Nike is doing the same thing with its “new” slogan. “Why Do It?” creates attention. It says something fresh and different. And the change in words, paradoxically, ensures everyone thinks about the original slogan all the more. This isn’t the reckless abandonment of one of marketing’s great slogans, it’s a clever tactical attempt to reinforce and rejuvenate it.

The lesson for marketers is a two-fold one. For the first 30, yes 30, years, your job is to establish distinctive brand assets and use them relentlessly in the pursuit of salience. But in middle age, just as the brand starts to get dusty, your best loved brand assets provide a perfect opportunity to refresh the brand through temporary transformation and inversion.

It’s a tricky brand management challenge. The first chapter is about consistency, repetition and respect. The second shifts to playfulness, creativity and change. Why do it? Because at a certain stage of a brand’s evolution it makes perfect marketing sense.