Nike Inc. is a multinational corporation that focuses on the manufacture, and sale of
footwear. It was founded in 1964 by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman and began as a small
running shoe company (Piskorski & Johnson, 2012). The company was originally known as Blue
Ribbon Sports obtained the current name from a famous swoosh logo (Piskorski & Johnson, 2012). By1979, Nike had captured and dominated more than half of the running shoe market in
the United States and filed for an IPO a year later in 1980 (Piskorski & Johnson, 2012). The
company later captured markets of other sports, including football, baseball, tennis, and baseball.
This paper aims to study Nike's social strategy, analyze how the company uses social media, and
discuss how it integrates its digital strategy with its social strategy. The paper will also discuss
how Nike was able to develop and integrate its social and digital strategy.
The ecosystem of Nike as a foundation for its social strategy
Nike launched its website, Nike.com, in 1998, and its sport-specific website,
Nikefootball.com, in 2000 (Piskorski & Johnson, 2012). The company then devised ways to
connect with its customers through the created mediums. The company also collaborated with
Gawker media and YouTube, both of which were upcoming to learn how consumers interact
with new brands on social media and the internet. Nike also worked closely with Gawker media
to create a blog in 2004. This was before social networking became popular and
garnered the public's full attention (Piskorski & Johnson, 2012). Nike was curious to understand
how the 400,000 to 700,000 visitors in a month would interact in a conversation with the host
(Piskorski & Johnson, 2012).
A year later, in 2005, Nike was aware that the World Cup championship was fast
approaching and, therefore, focused its energies on the global football market. For this reason,
Nike worked with MySpace, a social media network, to acquire 50,000 friends and this helped
the company become the largest brand communities of that time (Piskorski & Johnson, 2012). In
September the same year 2005, Nike’s marketing team created a video, Touch of Gold featuring
football star Ronaldinho receiving Nike’s pair of cleats and then hitting the ball in a stylish way
back and forth (Piskorski & Johnson, 2012). The created video took YouTube by a storm
attracting more than 20 million views in a span of few weeks (Piskorski & Johnson, 2012). Use APA guidelines