Nike embraces social media but is “still learning”

Recently, a few of us went to the ‘Advertising in a Social Media World’ conference.

Some great speakers from Nike and Panasonic talked about their experiences in social media, alongside speakers from Crowd Surfing, Social Media Library, Facebook and YouTube giving us food for thought.

We live tweeted with lots of stats and titbits from @BrassAgency on the day itself. In this post we’ll focus on what Simon Owen from Nike had to say, and we’ll be following up with further blog posts soon!

Simon from Nike said:

“Only five years ago, we were doing big inspirational campaigns. The fragmentation of media has been great for us. We can now talk about our products to people that definitely want to hear about them. With social media, we can communicate with 25m people in one minute that actually want to listen and engage with our brand. It’s quite scary!”

Nike use their digital agency in the same way as the LIVE! service that we offer at Brass. They have trained someone within their agency to be their spokesperson online. With LIVE!, ground rules are set and the agency and client work closely together to ensure that they are being both proactive and reactive with their social media activity.

LIVE! does not fit as easily with traditional campaign planning models/cycles, as the activity is constant. Nike have acknowledged this, saying:

“Fundamentally, social media has changed every element of how we structure and plan campaigns”

Nike now start looking at social media as one of the first elements and work out how traditional can support, not just lead, the activity

…and the rewards for doing this are enormous. As Simon said:

“Our Facebook fans are now as powerful as journalists”

Simon spoke of Nike’s successes, but was also honest and said “we don’t always get it right”. Nike ran a competition asking for video entries for the chance to win a big prize – go to the World Cup and be a reporter alongside some other famous sporting personalities. However, they only received 50 entries in total. This was obviously disappointing as they expected a great deal more.  Nike’s lesson was to “keep it simple and natural to what people feel they are able to and want to do”. It’s easy to get caught up designing a complicated entry mechanic that you think everyone will love. Even the most passionate of brand advocates will sometimes struggle to put the time and effort into entering a competition where lots of effort is required.

Other ‘in-progress learnings’ from Nike include “still trying out the balance between brand driving and sales driving” and “we’re learning all the time”.

Overall I enjoyed the Nike presentation. It showed that Nike are embracing the ‘always-on’ nature of digital with social media and they are planning their social media activity alongside the rest of the comms mix in exactly the way we would recommend.

However, I wonder how many people thought “oh they are Nike, they have big budgets and can do this sort of activity” and go back to producing the same old tired Facebook pages and twitter feeds.

Everyone can do LIVE! marketing, you just need to plan it well, making sure you think about all the scenarios and have the right team in place to help you to be proactive, reactive, engaging and creative.

Image courtesy of Simon Owen from Nike