How to Tell Your Brand Story

Greatness. It’s just something we made up.

Somehow we’ve come to believe that greatness is a gift, reserved for a chosen few. For prodigies. For superstars. And the rest of us can only stand by, watching.

You can forget that.

Greatness is not some rare DNA strand. It’s not someprecious thing. Greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We’re all capable of it.

All of us.

The touched words are quoted from Nike’s new campaign. I’m not a big television advertising fan and I’m even less a Nike fan. But they have a series of commercials on television during the Olympic Games that I positively love.

Nike and Adidas are both leading brands in sports market. Interestingly, the two competitors share quite a lot of similarities in terms of brand mission, target audiences, communication strategy and so forth. In this summer, might to cater for the Olympic atmosphere, the two companies launched their new campaigns. In this blog, I would like to give a comparison on how Adidas and Nike tell their brand story.

Adidas continues the same theme in 2011 ‘Adidas is all in’, which brought together sport, street, and style celebrities in one campaign. The assemble effect from these stars appears quite eye-attractive. The creative concept behind the campaign is not only showing that Adidas is making every effort to offer best for the customers; but more importantly, it also means the love of the game, the career, the life that we put all our heart into everything we  love.

The centerpiece of Nike’s campaign is a “Find Your Greatness” film that breaks through social media and digital channels on July 25. Cited official description, it is not just the championship athlete or record breaker that aspires to push their limits. It is also the everyday athlete who strives to excel on their own terms, to set and realize personal goals and achieve their own defining moment of greatness.

The film shows everyday athletes from around the world training, playing and competing, with the common thread that the locations featured are all called London. We first join a scene at “London Gym” where a man pumps out crunches during a workout, then go to a rugby match in East London, South Africa, where a boy breaks the line handing off a larger opponent.  In Little London, Jamaica, a female boxer works the pads with consummate skill and precision. In London, Ohio, we see a close up of a focused young baseball player catch the ball and throw it to first base in one seamless action. While each athlete defines their own goals and success, they are all connected by a unifying sense of what greatness could be to them.

Please click the link below to watch the campaign video.

Advertising Video for Nike’s Find Your Greatness Campaign (London Centric)

The core information from Adidas and Nike is similar，both encourage everyone in their own personal achievement, inspirational and emotional.  Moreover, this time they both focus on the young customers, the next generation. However, their way of telling the story is quite different.

In Adidas’ promotion video, David Beckham, Lionel Messi, Derrick Rose and Katy Perry go all in. In four positions worldwide, in different time, the video describes their running activities. The footage is beautiful and classic. However, from my point of view, there are several problems.

Please click the link below to watch Adidas’ WE ALL RUN promotion video:

Adidas’ Promotion Video of All In campaign: Adidas We All Run

Firstly, the communication concept is confused. The information of ‘all in’ is not well expressed by official posters or promotion video. From the audiences’ perspective, what they saw is the assembling of stars. Although eyes-attractive, it has nothing to do with the spirit of ‘all in’. More seriously, these footages of celebrities are simply mixed together without a real concrete story line. As suggested in the book of Made to Stick, a story or a concrete but simple, clear information is pivotal if we want to effectively spread an idea.  Viewers are hard to receive the deep information of ‘all in’ as Adidas’ branding expectations merely depends on several stars’ appearance. Moreover, according to Adidas branding manager, ‘adidas has to connect to these kids and get them excited’. Unfortunately, I am sorry to say it’s hard to find the insights on connecting young generation in this video.

In conclusion, in Adidas’ campaign, the information about what the brand is, what the brand delivers and what the viewers receive is not consistent.

In comparison to Adidas, I think Nike does better on telling their brand story. The film reaches its climax when we are reminded of the power in seemingly everyday moments from a young girl performing flips in her front garden to the crescendo of a young boy deliberating a first jump from a high diving board into a pool – a defining moment for him that ends in a final leap into his own moment of greatness. The theme is better delivered with the help of clear narratage.

Here is another perfect illustration on how Nike tells a story, please click the link below to watch another very successful advertising video on Find Your Greatness campaign:

Nike Campaign : Find Your Greatness (Jogging)

This is Nathan. He is 12 years old. He’s from London, Ohio. Greatness is not beyond his reach, nor is it for any of us.

There is only one scene in this film: a overweigh boy kept jogging, closer and closer. It cannot be defined as a story, however, the core information: everyday athletes, everywhere, every achievement during participating and enjoying the thrill of an athletic lifestyle is clear and delivered in an emotional way.

Finally, I would like to say that tell a brand story is not only about inviting celebrities as spokesman, or making a beautiful video. The most important thing is how to clearly clarify the core information and make full use of everything we have. For instance, there are mountainous celebrities represent for Adidas as well, however, Adidas apparently should explore more aournd each spokesman, say, create personal story for each star rather than simply ‘copy paste’ all of their pictures in one poster.