Nathan Sorrell starred in one of Nike’s biggest commercials of the London Olympics.
Through last year’s London Olympics, Nike launched what is called one of the best social media campaigns of 2012.
In this campaign, used through mostly Twitter and Youtube, Nike posted pictures, videos, and inspirational messages about how anyone can “find greatness”. The main idea behind the campaign was to show that anyone can become whoever they wanted, possibly like some of the Olympic athletes that millions of people were watching religiously on TV. In one of their most successful advertisements, Nike had a minute long commercial starring Nathan Sorrell of London, Ohio (how ironic) and shows him running down a farm road. Sorrell most likely isn’t the smallest kid in his class, and some people found this degrading. However, in the big picture, Nike and millions of people found it as motivation to strive to become a fit and active person and achieve greatness. While doing so, hopefully wearing Nike products, of course.
The ad, which is on Nike’s YouTube channel, now has over 1.6 million views.
Personally, this type of advertisement is perfect for the event they were marketing it in. Nike aired these commercials throughout the Olympics, and rightfully so. Using video and tweets to their advantage, Nike reached the greatest audience through social media during this time. Young, active, sports-enthusiasts were tuning into the Olympics on a daily basis for a couple of weeks, and were bombarded by these videos with a hashtag. When logging on to Twitter and tweeting about the events (as most Olympic/sports nuts do), they saw promoted hashtags and tweets by Nike about #FindYourGreatness. Getting behind a campaign that was inspirational for millions of views and that promoted being active was popular amongst the Olympic viewers.
Just as Shama Hyder Kabani said in her book The Zen of Social Media Marketing, “Social media is where the people are.” And on YouTube and Twitter during the 2012 London Olympics was where the best possible audience was for this marketing campaign.
Overall, I’d nominate Nike for the best social media marketing campaign of the year for these sets of advertisements. They marketed their brand and product to their target and primary audience, and did it at the perfect time, during the 2012 London Olympics. Using the concepts of active, fit, young people and the inspirational mood set things off for Nike. I wouldn’t do anything differently, and they should definitely do this (or something similar) for every year there are Olympics.
Dan Callahan's Internet Marketing Blog 