Introduction
Advertising is a central tool in the business world, helping to popularize products and make them familiar to clients. It contributes to establishing the brand’s reputation and its image among customers. However, the diversification of available products and the tendency towards the growth in complexity of most interactions in the modern world are impacting advertising.
Nowadays, companies strive to be more creative in influencing their target audience, combining various messages and approaches to appeal to emotions and establish a positive association between a particular product and specific feelings in clients’ minds. For this reason, most modern promotional materials contain several layers of meaning and hidden messages that work on the unconscious level. For instance, by analyzing Nike’s advertising “You Can’t Stop Us,” it is possible to see how corporations interact with their target audiences and how powerful ads are made.
Creative Execution
Nike is one of the leading sportswear brands globally, meaning it correctly realizes the power of advertising and the necessity of using innovative approaches. Thus, it employs creative execution to enhance attention, processing, and recall of information relevant to the brand (Huhmann, 2020). For this reason, the brand avoids direct demonstration and promotion of its products. Instead, it focuses on cultivating awareness and promoting attitude change in clients, which is a central objective of the company’s marketing campaign.
Powerful advertisements that customers remember often address real-world problems and focus on socially essential issues (Bergkvist & Langer, 2022). Nike utilizes this trend by not directly speaking about its products; instead, it offers a motivational message to support people in their pursuit of achievement. It makes the advertising more attractive to viewers and less irritating, as in some cases, clients may be tired of overly intrusive promotional campaigns (Sharma et al., 2022). As a result, the short film conveys a strong social message and popularizes Nike.
Furthermore, by avoiding focusing on a particular product, Nike addresses a vast target audience. At first glance, it is clear that the brand appeals to athletes who prioritize achievement and hard work to achieve results. However, the advertisement also appeals to people who struggle to make changes and try to achieve their goals in other spheres, except for sports.
In this way, Nike does not specify its target audience, and the footage depicts a diverse range of people, including professionals and amateurs (Marketing The Rainbow, 2021). It helps viewers identify with the heroes of the advertisement. It contributes to the outstanding expansion of the targeted audience and to finding new loyal clients. Touching upon the ideas of inclusion, diversity, achievement, and struggle, the brand creates a sense of belonging among a diverse range of social groups, which is one of the potent ways to make a promotion that will be remembered and appreciated.
The advertising communicates several important messages that make it more potent in attracting attention to Nike. First, it uses the pronoun “we” throughout the whole video, which is essential for interacting with the audience. Although the second-person pronouns can increase engagement, the brand avoids using them (Schoenmakers et al., 2023).
Instead, it focuses on cultivating empathy and agency among viewers, which is achieved by using “we” and creating a theoretical group of people who are ready to struggle (Grant et al., 2018). It effectively conveys the central message, which is the need to unite, set aside differences, and work diligently to achieve a desired result. In this way, the audience feels inspired and ready to work with the brand that promotes these ideas and aims to achieve positive social change.
Another important message is that people can make a positive impact on the world. It is an essential idea emphasized in the video, illustrated by examples of COVID-19 and its restrictive measures or failures depicted in the short film “Marketing The Rainbow” (2021). Inspirational appeal is central to modern advertisements as it works at several levels.
First, it encourages customers to take a step and start acting, which is essential for a brand selling sportswear and apparel. Second, it inspires one to join the team of winners and strugglers, which is depicted in an advertisement made by Nike. As a result, after watching the video, people may start associating the brand with the heroes depicted and follow the brand’s message.
Nike also selects an inclusive tone to create the emotional coloring of the video. Inclusion and tolerance are the central trends of modern society. By utilizing them, the brand expands its potential target audience and benefits from incorporating these ideas into its advertising campaign. It is also necessary to acknowledge the voice and tone used by the narrator when presenting the ideas in the video.
Research shows that the human voice can impact the purchasing intentions of clients (Barcelo et al., 2018). The pleasant tone that matches the customer’s mood fosters a desire to listen to the information presented by the speaker and consider purchasing a particular product (Barcelos et al., 2018). In this way, Nike employs a female voice, accompanied by music, to establish a tone of inclusion and understanding.
Psychology
Practical and powerful advertising also employs specific psychological principles that influence the target audience through both internal and external factors. The research indicates that the effectiveness of advertising is influenced by individuals’ unconscious emotional responses (Otamendi & Martin, 2020). It means that the advertisement should be constructed in terms of the psychological principles and their contribution to achieving the marketing objectives.
Nike effectively uses Cialdini’s psychological principles of persuasion and motivation to attain the desired outcome. These include reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity (Alslaity & Tran, 2021). The analyzed advertisement utilizes the concept of social proof by emphasizing the idea of achievement and the importance of unity.
In such a way, the short movie impacts a person’s psychological core and basic instincts. People are social creatures, and most of them try to follow the rules accepted in society at a particular moment (Kotler & Armstrong, 2020). It also means conformity to the norms and the desire to become part of a specific phenomenon that is important at the moment (Kotler & Armstrong, 2020).
The advertisement emphasizes inclusion, diversity, and struggle, which are critically important at the moment and are widely discussed in various sources. As a result, viewers are ready to engage in the processes outlined in the video as they are socially acceptable and might contribute to improving their status. It is a compelling psychological principle that helps Nike to position itself as a leading company that cultivates diversity and invites others to follow its example. The advertisement should also trigger critical emotional processes in the brain, such as reward, motivation, and perception, which influence consumer behavior and their readiness to buy a particular product (Alsharif et al., 2022). Nike accomplishes this task and combines several psychological factors in the short video.
Motivation
Another critical aspect of advertising is its attempt to influence the viewers’ motivation. Following the idea of Cialdini’s principles, it uses social proof as a strong stimulus. Thus, a person’s motivation is a vital predictor of their degree of commitment to a particular factor (Cheng et al., 2020). It means that cultivating intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is fundamental for advertising.
The research also indicates that the desire to engage in a particular activity or participate in a specific process persists longer when individuals are intrinsically motivated (Chung et al., 2022). For this reason, Nike avoids focusing on extrinsic motivation, despite showing numerous examples of achievement and fame (Marketing The Rainbow, 2021). However, it also appeals to Cialdini’s principle of consistency, as individuals want to be consistent with their identity (Cheng et al., 2020). Their visions of self-image are an essential factor impacting satisfaction and motivation levels (Chung et al., 2022). For this reason, Nike created an advertisement that calls everyone a leader who can promote positive social change and achieve significant success in making the world a better place.
Furthermore, Nike makes several essential steps to increase attention, improve memorization, and assist comprehension. The problem is that nowadays, customers are exposed to numerous advertisements every day, which might reduce their attention levels (Bell et al., 2022). In this regard, the information presented by the brand might be ignored or misunderstood. For this reason, Nike features celebrities such as Cristiano Ronaldo and other athletes in its videos (Marketing The Rainbow, 2021). It helps gather viewers’ attention at an unconscious level and ensures they are ready to comprehend and absorb information.
Furthermore, the research indicates that repeatedly presented stimuli are evaluated more positively than novel ones (Yagi & Inoue, 2018). This factor is used in advertising to attain the desired effects. Nike repeats the same ideas and similar images several times to ensure that viewers understand the message, remember it, and reflect on it after the ad ends. It contributes to forming long-term connections in clients’ minds and helps achieve the desired marketing objectives.
Social Influence
Finally, the analyzed advertising targets specific reference groups to influence them at various levels. Thus, social norms impact customer behavior in various contexts (Melnyk et al., 2022). It means that most individuals subconsciously want to follow the dominant rules and stereotypes and avoid being judged for not conforming to them (Melnyk et al., 2022).
At the same time, active groups struggling against particular issues may be considered the strongest and most influential actors in determining an individual’s contribution to meeting social norms (Kotler & Armstrong, 2020). In the analyzed video, Nike appeals to the activists, change agents, and individuals who want to belong to the new culture that is being widely accepted by most advanced groups nowadays. As a result, by employing normative influence and selecting influential reference groups, Nike conveys a powerful message that persuades most viewers to follow it.
Furthermore, this idea is closely connected with the customer culture, which is another crucial determinant of the brand’s success and the popularity of its products. The dominant culture nowadays emphasizes the importance of promoting diversity and inclusion, as well as establishing equal opportunities for all individuals, regardless of their race, gender, or health status. The advertisement follows this pattern, depicting women, men, LGBT activists, individuals with disabilities, and people from diverse cultures and racial backgrounds (Marketing The Rainbow, 2021). It emphasizes the idea that the brand does not distinguish between its clients and that its products are suitable for everyone. At the same time, it coincides with the existing customer culture, which accepts the necessity of being tolerant and struggling together to achieve better results. In this way, Nike managed to create an advertisement that has a strong social influence, calls for action, inspires people, and, at the same time, aligns with the dominant culture existing in society nowadays.
Conclusion
Altogether, the analyzed advertisement by Nike can be considered a practical example of utilizing this tool to attract customers’ attention and ensure they are interested in the brand. The brand refrains from direct product promotion and does not explicitly highlight the advantages of its products. However, it created the video with the idea of promoting positive social change and transforming society together. It follows the cultural tendencies peculiar to the modern world. Simultaneously, the advertisement encourages customers to take action, contributing to positive social change and a better world. By combining several psychological principles, Nike makes its advertising more appealing to customers, captures their attention at a high level, and ensures they are ready to start cooperating and become loyal Nike partners.
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