When I watch television, I mostly try to skip the commercials. I use my DVR to no end, and even when watching a live broadcast I time my bathroom breaks and trips to the kitchen so that I spend as little time as possible being tricked by corporate America into buying a product that I probably don’t need. I feel this way because the majority of commercials are unoriginal and boring, causing me to forget what the commercial was even selling almost immediately after it ends. It is rare that I find a commercial effective, memorable, and even inspiring like this one from the Nike Courage Campaign.
This unique, montage style commercial celebrates Nike’s 20 years in business and in doing so takes the Nike name to new heights. The ad features 31 athletes from all different sports including basketball, running, biking, tennis, soccer, and gymnastics. Nike moves beyond featuring just sports and shows images of all types of courageous acts including an infant taking its first steps and an astronaut preparing to go into space. These feats have no part in traditional sports commercials, making this campaign clearly different from what has come before it. The intention here is not to market a specific item or star, but to have the audience associate a feeling of empowerment and courage to overcome any obstacle with the brand Nike.
Nike advertisers do a few very effective techniques in this commercial. First, they get your attention. In the first shot, you see the quote “Everything you need is already inside.” The quote is not only directed at you, the viewer, but is not selling you anything, does not have a celebrity athlete saying it, and does not even tell you that this is a Nike commercial. It is simply stating that whatever goal you have, you have the tools to accomplish it, whether it is sports related or not. The unique montage aspect of this commercial allows Nike to include many images of a large variety of endeavors, both involving sports and not. The sports representations include everything from track and field to motocross showing famous athletes like Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, Michael Johnson, Lebron James, Maria Sharapova, and many others. Pictures of a fetus in the womb, a young girl being ceremonially painted, and animals running through the wild also fly across your vision. The technique not only gets and keeps our attention, but shows us so many images that each person watching the commercial identifies with a sport, a particular athlete, or one of the other images. By including this diverse group of images, the target audience is fully accounted for. The ad is directed at you, and you identify with what you see.
This commercial is also successful because it creates a feeling of accomplishment by showing defeat and obstacles towards the middle portion of the montage. You see a female gymnast miss a vault landing, runners keeling over in pain, as well as Lance Armstrong lying in a hospital bed receiving cancer treatments. Scenes of recovery and triumph follow these images of disappointment and struggle. Lance Armstrong is shown biking in the Tour de France again, sprinters raise their arms in victory, Michael Jordan kisses the NBA Championship trophy, followed by the final shot of a man with two prosthetic legs sprinting on a track. This last shot is the most powerful and lasting image in the commercial. It exemplifies a person overcoming a trauma and thriving in doing what he loves despite what others may have thought possible. Here Nike can insert their memorable and most appropriate tagline “Just do it” to cement the ad’s message of courage the clearest.
Despite the amount of visual information contained in one minute, the music featured in this commercial is one of the most powerful features. The song is a section from “All These Things That I’ve Done” by the Killers where the electric guitar strums in a repetitive and dramatic way leading up to a repeat of the lyrics “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier.” While these words may be interpreted in many ways, in this context the lyrics appeal to the warrior in all of us. Although I may not be a soldier or a professional athlete, I have the soul and the courage to tackle the challenges that come my way. I as the audience simultaneously relate to the images passing over the screen and am empowered by the repeating lyrics I hear.
To be honest, I have the urge to get off my couch and run a few miles after I see this commercial. Nike has managed to make me associate their brand not with a celebrity spokesperson or catchy jingle, but with a feeling, a drive to get up and do something of value because they have inspired me to.
