In the late 1980s Nike was not yet the obvious leader of sportswear. Rival Reebok had ridden the aerobics craze of the decade, aiming its marketing at fitness classes. Nike was a running and basketball brand with a lot of separate ads and no single idea tying them together.
A line for five ads
In 1988 Nike’s agency, Wieden+Kennedy of Portland, Oregon, had its first television campaign for the brand with real money behind it: five different 30-second spots. Dan Wieden, who had co-founded the agency with David Kennedy in 1982, needed a line that would connect them.
As he later told the design magazine Dezeen, he found it in an unlikely place. “I was recalling a man in Portland,” he said: Gary Gilmore, who had grown up in the city. In 1976 Gilmore murdered two men in Utah, and in 1977 he was executed by firing squad. His reported last words were “Let’s do it.” (Some accounts say he actually said “Let’s do this.”)
Wieden didn’t like the “let’s,” so he changed it. “Just Do It” was born at an agency meeting that year.
Why three words worked
On paper, the slogan barely says anything. That was its strength.
- It fit every sport. The line worked for a marathon runner, a basketball player or someone going for a first jog.
- It spoke to the viewer, not the product. Instead of describing shoes, it challenged the person watching to act.
- It was open to interpretation. Campaign magazine later called it “arguably the best tagline of the 20th century,” saying it cut across age and class and let people read their own meaning into it, which created a personal connection with the brand.
- It had attitude. Where Reebok’s marketing focused on aerobics, Nike’s was tougher and more competitive.
The line also let Nike speak to people who were not elite athletes. Customers began to associate buying Nike with the prospect of achieving something themselves.
What it did for Nike
The results are among the most cited in advertising. From 1988 to 1998, Nike increased its share of the North American domestic sport-shoe business from 18% to 43%, and its worldwide sales grew from $877 million to $9.2 billion. The slogan, together with the Swoosh, helped Nike overtake Reebok and become a global giant.
Advertising alone didn’t do that. Nike’s endorsement deals, especially with Michael Jordan, and its product design mattered enormously. But “Just Do It” gave every ad, athlete and product a single voice.
Legacy
The slogan is still in use more than three decades later. It has been parodied endlessly; in May 2015 a video of actor Shia LaBeouf shouting “Just do it!” became a widely shared internet meme.
For its 30th anniversary on September 5, 2018, Nike released “Dream Crazy,” featuring athletes including LeBron James, Serena Williams and, controversially, Colin Kaepernick. That the slogan could carry a campaign that divisive, three decades on, shows how much meaning three plain words had absorbed.