Competitors find it hard to resist a challenge, to say no to that challenge when it’s passed to them. They find it hard not to try to show up the previous person, to blow them out of the water, or leave them trailing in the dust. In Nike’s new campaign, “Free Yourself” Nike asks the competitor inside us all, “What can you achieve?” They challenge you to try it, to buy their shoes, the Free’s, and free yourself from limitations and expectations. The ad features many athletes doing incredible stunts, dances, hits and jumps to show off their extraordinary athleticism, then nodding to the next person, throwing down the gauntlet so to speak. The advertisement uses this challenge to motivate its consumers not only to buy the shoes, but also to motivate them to live a healthier and more active lifestyle.
In order to appeal to a broader audience, the original campaign was edited to be more inclusive. When the Nike Free shoe first came out in 2006, the original campaign was titled “Reincarnate Now” and featured Maria Sharapova, Christiano Ronaldo, and Roger Federer. The “Reincarnate Now” campaign was attempting to motivate athletes to leave their old selves behind, similar to the “Free Yourself” campaign which motivates people to free themselves from whatever is keeping them from going further. The difference between the two is that Nike’s new “Free Yourself” campaign is targeting a broader audience by including a little girl, street basketball players, roller derby skaters, a boy jumping into the bed of a truck, or in other words, many athletes that people don’t normally associate with exercise. The new campaign isn’t focusing on the ethos of famous athletes like the old one did, but more so attempting to reach the athlete inside of everyone. Nike’s mission is “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world” and according to one of Nike’s founders, Bill Bowerman, “If you have a body, you are an athlete” (CITE SOURCE) therefore according to Nike, everyone has potential to be these people doing these incredible stunts. Nike’s ad is targeting everyone, old and young to be motivated to buy these shoes by challenging them to be creative and show up the runners at the end of the commercial, who had left the last challenge up to the consumers to get stronger, faster and outdo the challenge thrust upon them.
Nike also uses the start of spring, the start of people’s major push to lose weight and to help advertise their shoe. The “Free Yourself” campaign was first aired during Super Bowl XLV, which can be considered one the markers of the end of winter, the starting of marathon season, outdoor track, or the push to look your best for summer. The ad relies on the kairos of the moment of one of the biggest sports games in our country to reach the audience and challenge the audience to get moving. Most people know that exercising is good for them, but they just don’t have the motivation to start. The commercial counteracts this by appealing to the competitive nature of human beings and challenging them to get take action and to free themselves from what they think is possible by showing tricks such as running marathons, to doing a simple cart wheel. The Super Bowl also helps to emphasize this challenge by showcasing another display of athleticism, as if the game was a much longer continuation of Nike’s advertisement, thereby showing their point further.
Today, obesity is a wide spreading epidemic, and Nike uses this to create the exigence to exercise and prevent this from happening. The commercial mainly focuses on people who display an amazing athletic talent and would be considered thin and healthy, but at the end of the commercial the crowd at the start of the race features people of all different sizes, the skinny typical runners, but also seen as they run by the camera are average sized people are and even people who could be considered to be overweight due to a larger belly. This is ad is supposed to act as a motivator to show what they can accomplish with work. It challenges the viewers to take action and to show themselves what they can achieve through starting to exercise. The athletes performing the stunts serve as the challenge that the audience should attempt to outdo. The challenges that are passed down from the beginning are challenges to top what just occurred. The runners at the end passed the gauntlet to the audience, motivating them to get moving, to start exercising. The more people exercise and stay healthy, the less chance they have of having health risks associated with being overweight.
Nike’s purpose in creating this shoe was to create a shoe that no one had ever created before. The shoe is lightweight, approximately 6.4 ounces, and can easily bend whichever way your foot moves. When the Free first came out, Nike emphasized that running in the shoe was like running barefoot due to its light weight and easy maneuverability. Nike was again capitalizing on the kairos of the recent research that running barefoot, as the first humans did, was actually better for runners. Normal running shoes are heavily supported and cushioned, causing the runner to have to carry around more weight and also prevent the foot from moving more freely. Nike created this shoe to show results and to actually be beneficial to the wearer. Nike tested whether or not this shoe was actually increasing the areas they claim (lateral movement, speed, and coordination) by setting up two groups: one that wore the Nike Free for four thirty minute runs a week for six months, and a control group that wore their regular training shoes doing in doing the same exercise. Nike found that the control group had some improvement in speed and coordination, but not enough that would be considered statistically relevant. The group that wore the Nike Free’s, however, showed increases from ten percent to twenty percent, a significant improvement for only wearing the shoe for two hours a week for six months. Although this research isn’t shown in the commercial, it shows that Nike is concerned with the growing obesity problem in America. Creating a shoe that focuses on actually increasing a person’s athleticism, rather than focusing solely on comfort, shows this. Nike used the research of lighter, more maneuverable shoes to get ahead of other companies, and create a shoe that was like none seen before. By doing this, Nike ends up with the most credibility, as everyone who follows would simply be a copy cat of Nike’s innovation.
Nike’s emphasis on what can be done is a clear attempt at trying to convince the audience to start living a healthier life. Nike’s commercial does more than sell shoes, it tries to sell a lifestyle that is not only a lot cooler, but healthier as well. Knowing that most people are aware of the growing problem of obesity, Nike convinces everyone that they can be an athlete, and that the only boundary to being one is how hard that person tries. It tries to emphasize what can be done by a person; in fact, a clear shot of the shoe for more than two seconds at most never appears. The slogan, “Free Yourself” suggests more than just buying a pair of the Free’s. It suggests that you buy a pair of them in order to break the tradition of heavier, more cushioned shoes and to break the tradition of what normally defines an athlete. Break free of what is expected. A woman beats a man by three minutes, and a man in a wheelchair performs flips on a ramp. It tells you to be creative in what you can do, to think outside the box. What is expected is defied. What limits there are can be stretched. Free yourself from what you think you can do, surpass what anyone believes to be possible. Free yourself, or in the words of some of Nike’s previous slogans, go for the “BOOM” or “Just do it.”
“Developing Nike Free”. Australian Business Case Studies Pty. Ltd. 2nd Ed. Australian Financial Review. 2007. 29 March, 2011. <http://www.afrbiz.com.au/library/416226/publish/Asset/42190
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Reflection: I chose this piece because I felt that it shows how rhetoric is used in everyday life, how rhetoric can be used without the use of words. In this ad, Nike started a campaign to promote their shoes, but it also used the exigence of the growing obesity epidemic to sell them. Nike capitalizes on this with the ethos and pathos of the athletes, but also the kairos of the situation of the beginning of summer. I edited this peice to make it flow better, because a clearer understanding is more informatory. I also edited it to give a clearer description of the testing of the shoes to give a better understanding of how Nike actually tried to make a shoe that would effectively achieve what it had intended. To know the background helps to establish and ethos for Nike and a logos to know that the shoes actually works.
5_NikeOnline1.pdf>
Reflection: I chose this piece because I felt that it shows how rhetoric is used in everyday life, how rhetoric can be used without the use of words. In this ad, Nike started a campaign to promote their shoes, but it also used the exigence of the growing obesity epidemic to sell them. Nike capitalizes on this with the ethos and pathos of the athletes, but also the kairos of the situation of the beginning of summer. I edited this peice to make it flow better, because a clearer understanding is more informatory. I also edited it to give a clearer description of the testing of the shoes to give a better understanding of how Nike actually tried to make a shoe that would effectively achieve what it had intended. To know the background helps to establish and ethos for Nike and a logos to know that the shoes actually works.
