Andrew Lloyd Tells The Best Marketing Strategy Ever Used — Nike vs Adidas!

Let’s have a flashback of the 2012 London Olympics while we get ready for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 to begin on July 23, 2021.

Andrew Lloyd Beaver PA tells of the best competition between Nike and Adidas!

When word of the commencement of the London Olympics 2012 got out, within no time the race to become the title sponsor for the event started. Two giants amongst the brands competing for this title were no other than ADIDAS and NIKE. It did not come as a surprise to anywhere when ADIDAS won the auction fair and square. After all, they did bid for $150 million to get the rights for the event.

According to the Olympics Committee ADIDAS has bid the highest amount out of all the brands who had come forward to try and win the title of the title sponsor for the 2012 Olympics. After all, it is a big thing! The brand which will become the main sponsor was going to get immense exposure.

In the words of Andrew Lloyd Beaver PA “a positive mental attitude means asking how to do something rather than saying it is not possible”. This was the attitude Nike adopted after losing from Adidas at the auction. Nike revamped their marketing strategy ONLY for the Olympics.

The official brand ambassadors were Adidas and that was enough for them to advertise and shine bright at the Olympics. Nike had to come up with something that would grab the attention of the public towards themselves. Even though it seemed impossible, they put in a lot of effort.

Keeping in view Nike’s effort, people were really anxious to know which brand had taken the lead. The apparent answer was going to be Adidas as they were the official sponsors, but surprisingly, Nike outperformed Adidas.

It came as a shocker to many. In the words of Andrew Lloyd Beaver PA, “When you’re in what seems like a negative situation, find what’s good” That is exactly what Nike did. They did not sit back, but went ahead with determination, zeal and the wish to succeed and succeed they did!

The world was left dumbfounded. How was it even possible? What did Nike do to achieve success at this level? After probing, it was seen that Nike made use of a three-fold marketing strategy to stand out and beat Adidas. The question being asked was “What is this strategy?” “How did it do so well?”

The beauty and approach of marketing are such that it made Nike beat Adidas when there seemed that there was no competition between the two. Adidas had the tag of being the title sponsor of the Olympics with them which seemed almost impossible to beat. The exposure, the endorsements, the pitch they were getting was nothing as compared to Nike.

(1) According to the Olympics Committee, using words like Summer or London Olympics, London of UK and many more was banned and restricted. They thought that using these words will show an association of the brand with the event. So, they banned other brands from using these “keywords” These were the words and phrases people were searching for when they were looking for information on the 2012 Olympics in London.

Twitter statistics showed the Nike had more than 16,000 tweets about the Olympics whereas Adidas had only tweeted 9000 times about it. As far as followers were concerned, the number of Nike followers increased by 52,000 and Adidas only had an additional 10,000 followers.

So, what happened? How was that possible? How did Adidas not tweet more about the event while Nike, who was not allowed to use direct words, tweeted so many times?

It was because of the innovative thinking and intelligence of the people at Nike. The fact is even if a system is highly complex, people with a keen eye do find loopholes and the people of Nike found out about 3 of them. Nike had followed all the rules of the Olympic Committee. They did not use phrases like London in the UK. They found a way around it. They used London of other places in most of the tweets they did. Other words like London gym, London road etc were used. This made the usage of the word “London” legal.

These were the words that were closely related to the Olympics too. For instance, when a user was searching for London gym, Nike’s tweet about the Olympics in London was going to show up.

Because of this innovative thinking, Nike subtly took the lead. The best thing about this strategy was the fact that no one knew what Nike was doing. Only after the Olympics was over and the stats came out did people know what had happened.

Statistics show that the proactive thinking of Nike lead almost 37% of the population to believe that they were the official sponsors of the Olympics. On the other hand, only 21% of people know that the official sponsors were Adidas. As a result, the sales of Nike increased massively.

(2) Another loophole that Nike found and exploited was the goods the players were wearing. The rights of providing goods for Olympic was indeed reserved with the brand ambassadors i.e. Adidas; there were no clear instructions for which shoes the participants could wear. It was the choice of the participants. This allowed Nike to go ahead and make 400 participants as their brand ambassadors. They were then given the famous green and yellow Nike Volt shoes. This lead to the huge endorsement of the brand.

(3) Nike again took creativity to the next level by thinking out of the box. On one hand, Adidas was featuring participants in their ads, Nike went ahead and made took teenagers in their campaigns. Yes, that is right. No celebrity, no professional, no participants. These were common people, the face of the common man. Nike took teenagers and made them the face of their brand. This inspired people and made them connect with Nike on a personal level. Oh boy! Was that campaign successful or what?

The involvement of the youth, the common man in their ad campaigns created a form of deep association and affiliation with the brand in the eyes of the people.

This was the three-point strategy that allowed Nike to go ahead and defeat Adidas while they were the clear winners and had the support of the Olympics behind them. It was a genius strategy that made them win without having any sort of relation or association to the Olympics.

This shows us how important marketing is and even more so, how important keeping a cool head in case of difficult situations is. Nike did not lose hope. They fought the battle even when it seemed that they could not win!

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