Professional Communication: Strategic Analysis of Nike's Social Media

This presentation offers a detailed analysis of Nike's social media communication strategies, examining their use of various platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It explores how Nike leverages these tools to build brand awareness, attract audiences, and drive sales. The presentation covers key campaigns, including the Breaking2 project and the Equality campaign, and discusses how Nike establishes intercultural communication through its content. It also delves into Nike's content strategy, emphasizing quality over quantity, megastar endorsements, and going beyond product promotion. The analysis includes references to relevant research and provides insights into Nike's customer service approach via Twitter.

Strategic Analysis of Social
Media Communication Tools

Introduction
This presentation will make a detailed graphical and
illustrative analysis of the the business communication
and intercultural communication strategies of Nike,
around the world.
The working methodology of Nike in regard with usage
of social media communication tools and the extent to
which they have been successful in utilising those tools
to attract audiences and increase sales have also been
evaluated by the researcher in this presentation.

Organizational Background
Nike is a popular Global brand that was established in the year
1964 and initially named The Blue Ribbon sports by Bill
Bowerman.
The organisation is involved in designing, development as well
as manufacturing and global marketing of their products which
include footwear equipment, accessories, sports services as
well as sports apparel (Mahoney, Lovich,and Brady 2019)

Mission and Vision

Overall social media activity
The primary objective of of global
communication strategies of Nike is not to
enhance sales or create new sales channel.
Rather, the communication strategies are
faceted towards development of brand
awareness which is very helpful in
developing a competitive advantage in the
face of the Global competition that Nike
faces.

Overall social media activity Continued…
The sportswear giant is a a Master of social
media communication and the reigning
statistics emphasise their Fame.

Facebook as a communication tool
The primary Facebook pages of Nike have more than 30
million followers on an average.
The data provided by……… issues that in the latter half of
2016 and in the year 2017 Nike has gained more than 3.5
million new fans.
The primary strategy of establishing communication over
Facebook is publication of maximum number of posts and
promotion of older content.

Discussion of important campaigns
Most engaging posts of Nike had been part of two
significant campaigns held by the organisation in
the last two years.
In this context we can discuss about the ambitious
breaking2 project of Nike that accumulated huge
attention of fans over social media.

Establishing intercultural communication

Discussion of important campaigns
Continued…
These people in spite of being in too mainstream
sports did not have Global Fame before achieving
this feat.
Hereby, it can be analysed that Nike maintained
their mission of attracting people with most
unique and innovative content. In this campaign,
Nike did not select any Global personality in
sports, rather the company selected the
upcoming and new sports personalities
performing for the most popular sport categories
so that people could associate themselves with
the rising popularity of those sports person
(Mahoney, Lovich and Brady, 2019).

Popularity of the Breaking2 campaign

The Equality campaign of Nike.
Nike used the social media platform of Instagram for
maximum proportion of their equality campaign.
Highlight of this campaign involved 90 second spot video
featuring Serena Williams as well as LeBron James and
the voice over of Michael B Jordan was used by this
video.

The Equality campaign of Nike
Continued…
It has been observed by researchers including
Johnson and Hong (2015), that immediately after
the promotion of this video Nike had been the
title sponsor of several important sports events
in both USA and UK coma which featured the
first launch of customised sports goods of Nike.

Tattoo artist Ember, Nike.
(2018)

Content strategy of Nike
Quality over quantity
Megastar endorsements
Going beyond the product

Twitter as a communication channel
Nike uses Twitter as a communication
channel for advertising queries as well as
issues of customers. Almost 70% of
customer service in customer service is
done through Twitter (Do, Ko and Woodside
2015).

Twitter as a communication channel

Content development of Nike

Content development of Nike
Continued…

References
Lee, C. and Kahle, L., 2016. The Linguistics of Social Media:
Communication of Emotions and Values in Sport. Sport Marketing
Quarterly, 25(4).
Mahoney, T.Q., Lovich, J. and Brady, L., 2019. Social Media
Strategy in the Sporting Goods Industry: Potential Application for
Brooks Sports, Inc. SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases
Originals.
Reilly, A.H. and Larya, N., 2018. External Communication About
Sustainability: Corporate Social Responsibility Reports and Social
Media Activity. Environmental Communication, 12(5), pp.621-637.
Johnson, E.K. and Hong, S.C., 2015. Social media as a loudspeaker
for Nike: Can image repair communication on Facebook impact
emotion and responsibility attribution. Public Relat J, 9(4).
Do, H., Ko, E. and Woodside, A.G., 2015. Tiger Woods, Nike, and I
are (not) best friends: how brand's sports sponsorship in social-
media impacts brand consumer's congruity and relationship
quality. International Journal of Advertising, 34(4), pp.658-677.