The last quar­ter of 2017 in­to the first quar­ter of 2018 saw Nike tak­ing a hit in their bot­tom line due to nu­mer­ous scan­dals cen­tred on sweat­shops, and mis­be­hav­ing ex­ec­u­tives, es­pe­cial­ly in North Amer­i­ca.

Sales dropped to a record low in Feb­ru­ary 2018; by -6 per cent ac­cord­ing to Forbes, 11 ex­ec­u­tives ei­ther left or were dis­missed due to the scan­dals and the pub­lic per­cep­tion of the brand was left in sham­bles amid poor pric­ing de­ci­sions in its flag­ship “Jor­dan’s” sneak­ers, and protests of a more-so­cial­ly-con­scious con­sumer.

On Sep­tem­ber 3, 2018 the com­pa­ny de­cid­ed to launch a very cal­cu­lat­ed so­cial­ly charged cam­paign fea­tur­ing for­mer Na­tion­al Foot­ball League quar­ter­back turned ac­tivist Col­in Kaeper­nick.

The cam­paign en­ti­tled “Just Do It,” car­ried a very clear and com­pelling mes­sage: “No mat­ter what your dreams are, stand up for some­thing and just do it!”

Kaeper­nick rose to no­to­ri­ety in pre­vi­ous months with a silent protest dur­ing the Na­tion­al An­them of the Unit­ed States by kneel­ing; this protest specif­i­cal­ly ac­knowl­edg­ing the treat­ment be­ing doled out to black Amer­i­cans by the Amer­i­can Po­lice and Ju­di­cia­ry.

Putting this protest on the back­drop of an ex­treme­ly di­vid­ed and po­lit­i­cal­ly-charged Amer­i­ca, led to the de­nounce­ment of Kaeper­nick by some mem­bers of the pub­lic, in­clud­ing the Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, and his even­tu­al ter­mi­na­tion from the NFL.

Why is this im­por­tant?

Be­cause Nike saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to align its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR), with civ­il rights in an ef­fort to turn around their over­all im­age as a so­cial­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble com­pa­ny.

They al­so took a cal­cu­lat­ed risk that the mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy would not on­ly res­onate with the core pur­chasers of their prod­ucts, but the neg­a­tive vit­ri­ol that would come from the cam­paign would guar­an­tee the brands promi­nence in the me­dia, for free.

All press is good press, as proven by the suc­cess of the Trump Cam­paign to win the US elec­tion, and us­ing this tem­plate as the dri­ving force of their CSR cam­paign, they hedged their bets and it worked.

In less than two weeks, the cam­paign has al­ready blot­ted out the mem­o­ry of the pre­vi­ous years’ worth of scan­dal that dev­as­tat­ed the com­pa­ny’s bot­tom line.

As a mat­ter of fact, the com­pa­ny gained up­wards of US$165 mil­lion in earned me­dia in four days, as in­di­cat­ed by a CN­BC re­port on Sep­tem­ber 6, 2018.

In to­day’s mar­ket and econ­o­my earned me­dia is ide­al as it brings eyes on your brand for which you did not have to pay.

Nike is not on­ly stand­ing by the cam­paign whole­heart­ed­ly, with above the line cam­paign­ing, they are al­so ag­gres­sive­ly de­fend­ing their po­si­tion with de­ployed guer­ril­la mar­ket­ing tech­niques, es­pe­cial­ly via so­cial me­dia.

An ex­am­ple of this comes in the form of a no­tice they post­ed on their touch points on how to safe­ly dis­pose of their prod­ucts in the wake of Amer­i­cans cut­ting and burn­ing items with the Nike Swoosh; it seems they are all in re­gard­less of any back­lash.

It seems to be pay­ing off for the com­pa­ny, even though an ini­tial knee jerk re­ac­tion to the me­dia storm around the ad, and the nu­mer­ous out­cries of protest may have giv­en a short drop in the stock val­ue of Nike last week, as of Sep­tem­ber 12, 2018 Nike post­ed a 5.80 point in­crease in the stock val­ue of the com­pa­ny.

Fur­ther to this there was a 45 per cent in­crease in in­vest­ment by mil­len­ni­al in­vestors in­to the com­pa­ny, which is the core con­sumer of their prod­ucts.

The brand has al­so seen stel­lar growth in on­line and brick and mor­tar sales—turn­ing around their prof­it mar­gins from a pre­vi­ous­ly dis­as­trous year.

Trin­bag­on­ian brands can take quite a bit of knowl­edge from the use of CSR and the lever­ag­ing of sports­men and women in­to their ad­ver­tis­ing.

While the so­cioe­co­nom­ic fac­tors of North Amer­i­ca do not al­ways ring true in our con­text, we have seen the pow­er of so­cial me­dia and guer­ril­la mar­ket­ing hav­ing great ef­fect on the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion.

With in­vestors and con­sumers be­com­ing more ed­u­cat­ed and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy, can the con­ser­v­a­tive and tra­di­tion­al mod­els of mar­ket­ing sur­vive?

We are see­ing that pur­chasers are align­ing them­selves more with brands who rep­re­sent their ideals, and their moral codes, yet many com­pa­nies here do not har­ness their CSR ini­tia­tives be­yond the odd news­pa­per ar­ti­cle or TV blitz.

Nike is show­ing us now that mak­ing strong moral state­ments about your com­pa­ny can and will pos­i­tive­ly im­pact your bot­tom line and even a per­ceived mis­step can gain a brand sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket share in earned me­dia.

Per­haps it’s time for lo­cal com­pa­nies to be­gin look­ing at de­vel­op­ing aware­ness cam­paigns and en­dorse­ments that do not on­ly have great so­cial im­pact but can al­so har­ness great eco­nom­ic val­ue in en­dear­ing a dis­cern­ing in­vestor or con­sumer to lift Nike’s bot­tom line.

Now is the time to re­alise prof­it through cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Sources: https://mar­kets.busi­nessin­sid­er.com/news/stocks/nike-kaeper­nick-ad-shows-strength-2018-9-1027527698 • http://for­tune.com/2018/06/29/nike-shares-stock/ • https://www.cn­bc.com/2018/09/06/nikes-col­in-kaeper­nick-ad-cre­at­ed-163point5-mil­lion-in-me­dia-ex­po­sure.html