Just Undo It!
Nike's humble
beginnings began in Oregon as Blue Ribbon Sports, basically operating as
a distributor for a Japanese shoemaker. In 1971 it was preparing for
it's own line to be launched, these would be the shoes that would bear the swoosh
for the first time. The logo/trademark was later registered with the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office in January 1974.
In 1978, the
company officially became Nike, Inc.
It was not until
1988 that their agency Wieden+Kennedy launched the slogan "Just Do
It." Oddly, Dan Wieden says his
inspiration for the slogan came from Gary Gilmore, who reportedly said this as
his last words before his execution by firing squad in 1977. Clearly Dan Wieden
was cognizant of one fact: you can’t get sued by a dead man.
By 1980, Nike was
dominant, with 50% of the athletic shoe market. Their growth in the 80s
was meteoric, as they expanded into all sports and also began acquiring other
apparel and footwear interests including, Cole Haan, Bauer Hockey, Hurley and
Converse. Its brand and its swoosh became synonymous with cool success; synonymous
with Tiger, with Jordan, with all athletic excellence, and more importantly,
synonymous with global brand success and financial success.
Nike was the company
with the golden touch. And everyone wanted in on the action. Everyone wanted
the success that they had. Everyone wanted that cool factor.
So, what was the
easiest way to associate one’s company with the new, the hip, the cool?
Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, almost every company, large and
small began using a swoosh variation in their brand, or simply adding it to an
already existing identity.
Some of the
adopters were already successful companies…
...some were regional small fry, with
nothing to lose.
In the end, these
other, often half-assed iterations of the swoosh polluted the branding world
like a virus. And the ubiquitous presence of this second-hand crap was not
pretty. I even had clients of my own pushing me to incorporate likenesses of
it into branding components I was working on. Everyone wanted it.
The inevitable
cruel irony:
In 1971 a graphic design student at Portland State University
named Carolyn Davidson, was asked to do some work for the original Blue Ribbon
Sports. She designed the swoosh. Phil Knight, one of the founding partners,
didn’t even really like it. He was forced to make a choice to meet a production
deadline, reportedly stating: “I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.” If
only he realized how prophetic that statement was.
Carolyn Davidson
was paid $35.
In 1983, following
their IPO, Knight made good, giving Davidson a diamond ring engraved with the
swoosh and an envelope containing an undisclosed amount of Nike shares.
This shape, this
concept, lived long before 1971. Most publicly, in the brand world, as an icon
for Newport cigarettes starting in 1957.
