Why is Nike called Nike?

1964 65438+ 10 In October, Philip Knight, then a track and field athlete at the University of Oregon, and his coach Bill Ballman founded Nike's predecessor: Blue Ribbon Sports. At that time, "Blue Ribbon Sports" company was selling Japanese sports shoes brand Onitsuka Tiger as a distributor. Bill Ballman also designed a sneaker with a "waffle pattern" on the sole. The company has developed rapidly. 1966, Blue Ribbon Sports Company opened its first franchise store on Trenton Avenue. 1972, with the termination of cooperation with Japanese brands, the two founders decided to develop and manufacture their own shoes. They contracted production tasks to Asian factories with cheap labor and named the shoes Nike, which was named after the Greek goddess of victory. The logo of the new Nike shoes is "Swoosh", which is designed by Carolyn Davidson, a graphic design student at Portland State University. 197 1. Swoosh is eye-catching, unique and dynamic, which is the check mark of Nike that everyone is familiar with now. This logo will appear on every Nike product in the future. 1978, Blue Ribbon Sports officially changed its name to Nike, Inc., because Nike can fully grasp the demand of young people for sports and leisure shoes, understand their lifestyle and realistic psychological desires, develop creative new products, spread appeals and promotional activities, so it has been at the forefront of creating consumer trends, and Nike's position as the first in the world is not hollow. 1980 occupies about 50% of the US market share, and initially surpassed Adidas to sit at the top of the US sports shoes industry. Since then, Nike began to implement active marketing activities and signed contracts with top athletes. 1982 10, during the New York Marathon season, the first national television advertisement of Nike brand was broadcast. This TV advertisement was planned by Vuitton+Kennedy Advertising Company (headquartered in Poland, 1982, a new advertising company just established in April). Since then, Vuitton+Kennedy has continued to produce many creative print advertisements and TV advertisements for the Nike brand, and Vuitton+Kennedy Advertising Company is still the first cooperative advertising company of Nike. 1984, Nike signed a five-year contract with Jordan. Jordan's conditions also include giving Nike shares and using Jordan's name on Nike sneakers with unprecedented courtesy. Jordan's total value is as high as $6.5438+0 million per year. This price is five times that offered by Adidas or converse. Adidas and converse both think that Jordan is just a product spokesperson, but they didn't expect him to become the core of a marketing strategy and the whole production line of sports shoes and sportswear. Fortune magazine once published a striking report that it was a big mistake to sign such a contract in view of Nike's financial situation at that time. It turned out that the cooperation between Nike and Jordan was a "win-win" deal, which was largely attributed to Jordan, who exceeded many people's expectations. Jordan's influence on Nike is enormous. Jordan embodies vitality, prestige, superb competitive level and exciting sportsmanship, which enables Nike to go out of the circle of running shoes and make a big fuss about basketball, which has just begun to prevail in the United States. Almost overnight, even without looking at the sales volume, Nike has become the leading product of high-end basketball shoes. 1988, Dan Wieden, the founder of Vuitton+Kennedy advertising company, created a resounding slogan "Just Do It" for Nike's new round of advertising. Nike's "Just Do It" was rated as one of the five best advertising slogans in the 20th century by the famous Advertising Times magazine, and this time, Nike's advertising case was also included in the case course of the Smithsonian Institution. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, professional athletes were worshipped like heroes. Therefore, Nike invested a lot of money, invited successful and attractive famous athletes to speak for its products and adopted a pyramid-shaped image promotion strategy. That is, from the top athletes at the spire to the national team, to the provincial teams in the NBA league, and then to the ordinary youth basketball activities, including the four elements of the entire sporting goods market. The number of top athletes is the least, but they have strong radiation. Nike is not the only company that uses athletes to promote products, but only Nike is the most successful. Nike has a saying that the secret of management is to make high-quality shoes for athletes, so that they can walk in front of fashion and others in the market will follow suit.