A love letter to JUST DO IT
It’s the perfect slogan from an imperfect company. My complex relationship with Nike started with a simple poster.
A love letter to… an advertising slogan
Just do it. Just Do It. JUST DO IT. What a marvelous slogan. It’s the ultimate mind-over-matter solution to so many things about running that can hold you back.
If you struggle to get out of bed or just start your run, whisper, “just do it…” to yourself and you’ll be on your way in no time. If you’ve got another 8 of your 14-mile run to go, but you’re feeling completely over it, tell yourself you’re almost halfway there and to… just do it. Can’t get your head into a space to sit down and write Monday’s post? Guess what!?
That’s what I love about Just Do It. It can help you get over the hump, the mental block, the ennui, so that you can get on your way to completing and achieving the thing that’s going to make the rest of your day, week, life excellent.
My first experience with JUST DO IT was in my early teens. It was a long four-page foldout banner poster that was in a magazine – I can’t remember which, but I was a basketball fan and Arsenal FC had just signed a shirt deal with Nike, so I was surrounded by Swoosh propaganda.
Either way, that poster looked truly iconic, and so I put it up on my wall at the foot of my bed. It was the last thing I saw before my mum turned the lights out. Just do it! Sleep! And then it was what I saw when I first opened my eyes in the mornings, just before I turned over and thought about how late I could be for school.
Irritatingly, it’s also the kind of slogan that I don’t believe anybody can improve upon. If you’re someone like me, who writes for a living (please support this newsletter if you read it regularly!), you can be as optimistic as you like, but you’ll always know that the second best slogan in the world is the best you can ever be. Ah well.
Even Nike will likely never improve upon it. A salient example of that is how Nike had posters along the London Marathon route earlier this year that had to be apologized for. The message was ‘Never Again.’ If you have any friends who are marathoners, you’ll understand the context immediately. It wasn’t so clear to the non-running community, let’s say. The messaging wasn’t as beautifully universal as Just Do It.
That billboard was part of a broader campaign over the past couple of years based around the idea that ‘winning isn’t comfortable.’ One controversial part of that campaign was an ad that explained that if you don’t hate running a bit, you can’t love it. That rankled the running evangelists and non-competitive runners alike, even though I understand the sentiment. It’s very, ‘Running sucks, but…’
It was a very clear proposition, but only for a segment of ultra-competitive, goal-oriented runners. It reminded me of the Tracksmith ethos that aims for the amateur runner who wants to try to win. An amateur is someone who absolutely loves their unpaid hobby and pores an inordinate amount of time into it, after all.
In contrast, Just Do It is perfect in its universal, unambiguous nature. It doesn’t punch up or down. It’s neither elitist nor back-of-the-pack. It’s not about performance or pleasure. It’s simply a baseline mindset for you convincing you to do the thing you’re meant to be doing. To make a start, and then you can go from there. It’s a whole story in three words.
The genius behind the tagline is Dan Wieden of the Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency. He came up with the line in 1988. Apparently inspired by the final words of an executed American, its implementation saw Nike go from 18% to 43% of America’s sports shoe market over the next 10 years.
Having worked closely with Bridgerunners back in the early 2000s, Wieden+Kennedy’s New York office put the OG run crew in Nike ads and vice versa, thus becoming instrumental in the rise of the run club/crew over the past two decades, further solidifying Nike’s position as the primary culture creator in the world of running.
To read an exclusive story about W+K’s impact on how we run today, go and pre-order my book, This is Running. In there is an interview and insights around a Nike running event from 2011 that combined running and technology in a way that would change the way we thought about everything.
If you’re in the UK, This is Running is included in a special 25% off deal at Waterstones. If I get a few pre-orders there, they’ll run more promotions, sell more copies, and then in six months’ time you’ll be able to say you’ve been reading a best-selling author for ages. Preferred his earlier stuff, probably! That’s how it works. Over to you.
This is Running pre-order links
USA - Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop US
UK - Amazon UK | Waterstones | Bookshop UK
Canada - Amazon CA | Indigo
You come to love not by finding a perfect person but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly
I was halfway through writing the above love letter when I saw yet another piece of outrage about a Nike-affiliated race in London where women were being turned away because it was oversubscribed.
Nike is a primary culture creator in the world of running, whether you like it or not.
Yeah, that’s right. You might not! The thing about having this strange parasocial attachment for a business entity and its corporate-designed imagery is that when it makes $50 billion a year, I remember that nobody’s made billions of dollars with good practices. That makes things difficult.
The mid-1990s also saw multiple reports of Nike using sweatshops across Asia. They certainly still exist, but we are more likely to complain about them in the context of Zara and Shein instead now for whatever reason.
There’s the scandal around the Oregon Project and Alberto Salazar, of course, but there’s also the way they treated their pregnant athletes. That scandal moved the needle for all athletes thinking about becoming a parent, but left a bad taste in the mouth for many.
It’s curious how Nike keeps on avoiding getting fully cancelled. Maybe the draw of the Swoosh and the 4% power of the Vaporfly on our Boston Qualifying Time is simply too much to have strong morals. Maybe there’s too much other heinous shit going on around us to worry too much about who’s being exploited to buy our new running shirt.
When Saucony used Israeli soldiers as influencers, there was vitriol and vows to never purchase another pair of Endorphins. When Arc’teryx set off fireworks in the Himalayas, there was outrage and promises to buy Patagonia instead. When Altra put together a panel on women’s safety with an alarming lack of diversity and then deleted comments on IG, so many pointed out that we’re well past the time of brands ‘learning.’
Nike, even after that laundry list of pretty awful stuff announced the After Dark Tour of women’s half-marathon races and they all sold out with overwhelming support. They might have consistently bad race-day organization, but I can guarantee that they’ll announce another set next year, and they’ll sell out as well. It’s as remarkable as it is fascinating.
What would it take for you to never purchase from a brand ever again?
Last week on Running Sucks
I wrote about Jack Faint’s incredible story of running the length of India 6yrs after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. There are so many moments in this tale where I wondered what I would do in his situation.
Housekeeping
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Summed up all my thoughts perfectly! I still won't wear Nikes though.
This: "It’s as remarkable as it is fascinating." No matter how many times Nike has shot itself in both feet they always seem to bounce back without missing much of a beat. I wonder if it's their shear size/scale/marketing power combined with a mix of consumers' performative outrage/amnesia/moving on to the next thing to be mad about.