| Nike: Building a Global Brand | MKTG 4082W |
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1. Nike’s brand image, a set of emotions, feelings, and experiences with the brand, developed over time through advertising campaigns and consumer experiences with Nike. The core attributes of Nike’s brand image include high performance, innovation, and aggressiveness. Nike positioned itself as a company that makes products for athletes, by athletes. They tailor their products for serious/winning athletes and also stress their point-of-difference to be performance, as opposed to Reebok, whose point of difference is style.
Nike is perceived as a high performance brand and they always make performance a top priority, which is a key building block for their brand image and
With the rising popularity of basketball in Europe and Asia, Nike also planned to lead its marketing charge with its strong stable of basketball superstars. In addition, Nike implemented a global advertisement campaign during the 1994 World Cup, recognizing that soccer was the best way to enter new markets. In Asia, Nike abandoned its brash advertising attitude and celebrated local athletes as heroes in their ads. Overall, Nike had a kinder, gentler marketing approach with ads that projected a more international image (use of Tiger Woods and Ronaldo in ads). Nike’s new focus was to be seen as culturally, geographically, and personally relevant to local consumers abroad. I am not surprised that the advertising did not sit well with many Europeans because of the vast difference in the cultural aspects. Europeans saw Nike’s marketing actions as intimidating and too aggressive. Also, the brand did not have the history or heritage in the market and was starting more from scratch. In addition, fashion trends inevitably changed which caused Nike to be behind the curve. 3. To become a global corporation, Nike had to adopt a globalized strategy to build their global brand equity. They did this by broadening their portfolio of athlete endorsements and focusing their ad campaigns on different sports that were more popular in those areas. They kept the essence of the brand, the same core values, and stayed consistent with their marketing communications, but