What if Nike expanded their definition of “commercials”?

I’ve long been a fan of Nike’s commercials. For fans of sport– those who love playing and watching, Nike has always tried to capture the essence of the sport we love, and of the individuals we admire. I remember the Jordan/Mars Blackman ads, the “tag” commercial, and the Courage commercial I blogged about a few months back– but the list is kind of endless.

So what if Nike changed how they thought about making commercials? What if instead of spending millions of dollars buying all of that TV inventory to broadcast these commercials, they took a chunk of that money, and hired some extra people to produce a bunch more of these beautiful 60 seconds “commercials”. Produce more by a factor of 5x. Then air them once or twice on TV (if at all), and seed them on youtube, facebook, etc. People like me would totally share them on Facebook and on our blogs. Distribution is free when people want to share your message. Nike is one of the rare companies that, by virtue of the category they compete in, and through really great marketing, have tapped into their consumer’s emotions. People associate themselves with the brand and are excited by it. If anyone should be leading the next generation of marketing, it’s a company like Nike.

Here’s the Lebron James, Candyman commercial which stirred this post. Not surprisingly, I love this commercial. Embedded below:

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