“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.”
You can have Usain Bolt, The Dream Team 3.0, and even Michael Phelps.
I’ll take Nathan – the star of Nike’s commercial that stopped me in my tracks everytime it came on during the Olympics.
Click here if you can’t see the embedded video.
Here are three things you can learn from Nike’s Ad. Apply them to your own online presence.
A) Internet Video Wins – The first time I saw this ad, I only saw the last few seconds. I went straight to my iPad’s YouTube app and typed “Nike Greatness Kid Running” and my search results gave me exactly what I wanted. Did you know YouTube’s the second most visited search engine on the Internet? Are you there? Do you have any videos for your company?
And I don’t necessarily mean just TV commercials? Internet video – on your YouTube and Vimeo channels – can be complex, compelling ads for your business, or they can be done with an iPhone and a tripod – featuring you answering the most commonly asked questions about your business. They can be your employees showing consumers how to save time and money by doing simple things themselves.
As bandwidth and Internet speeds increase, video will become more and more powerful. Are you leveraging its power?
B) Simplicity Wins – In an over-communicated society, a whisper becomes a scream. Contrast this to the trailers for the latest Bourne movie or the latest commercial for Adidas, and you’ve got a simple, piercing, powerful core message shown and told one step at a time. How can you make your message, your core values, and your unique value proposition simpler? What can you strip away? What can you edit? To what can you say “no?”
C) Empathy Wins – Can you see yourself in his shoes? I can’t dunk a basketball or run the hundred in under ten seconds. Neither can you. But we can get up off our dorito-saddled butt and do this. On your website, can you relate to your customer? Can you feel their pain? Can you sense their struggles? Can you put yourself in their shoes? Write that. Show that.
It’s never been easier to spread a message.
Provided you have a message worth spreading.
Do you?
If not, it’s time to get to work – one small step at a time.
Just do it.
I had the exact same reaction to that ad. While my son (the professed “AppleNerd”) kept making me back up and watch all the Apple-related ads, that Nike ad was the only one that got me off the couch cheering. I’ve never run more than 4 miles at any one time in my life. Prior to my AppleNerd son joining the cross country team in junior high three years ago, I hadn’t run 4 miles collectively in almost a decade. Now I’m an obese 40-something training to run a half-marathon by the end of October and an Ironman Triathlon by August 2013. Nike wrote that ad specifically for me. I know it. Me and only me.
BTW – the ad also looked great at triple fast-forward (our preferred speed for watching DVR-taped ads). Something for anyone doing TV ads to consider is how does your ad look at triple fast-forward speed? Will it make someone rewind and watch? That ad did.