The Importance of Brand Positioning
When I think about a brand that has great position in their market it is a no brainer for me. I always walk into my bedroom and see countless boxes of their brand on my wall and all over the floor. Yes, it has taken over my room and my life. The brand that I am speaking of is Nike. My love of Nike started back in 1997 when I worked at Champs Sports in St Louis Center mall. I worked there for a brief time as a cashier and just walking into the store I felt like I belonged there. At the time I couldn’t afford to purchase any shoes because I was just there part-time till I found a job in my field of Interior Design, but that short time fueled something that I did not fulfill till 20 years later when my sister Lisa bought me a pair of Nike Free Connect cross trainers for Christmas and from there my collection grew from 3 pairs to now over 100 pairs of sneakers and the majority are Nike.
Nike’s brand vision is “To Bring Inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world” and their mission statement is “Do everything possible to expand human potential.” Just reading both their brand vision and statement shows they are leading the way in great performance footwear and apparel. Their customer base is someone that is looking for a great shoe that will help them get to the next level in their sport and it is someone that like to look fashionable when wearing their brand. For a weaker brand to try to compete they will have to come up with a great marketing campaign or sign a big sport star to help propel their product and brand to the next level.
Nike was founded by Bill Bowerman ant Phil Knight in 1964 and Blue Ribbon Sports. The name Nike is Greek for goddess of victory. When you look at where the name comes from it explains what type of product they were trying to develop. They developed products that athletes prefer to wear. I wonder what Bowerman and Knight were thinking when they came up with the name for Nike. They could have looked in a thesaurus looking for words that mean win or they could have been history buffs and also looks at Greek mythology and found a great name that stuck and was easy to roll off the tongue. Nike is a brand that has been around for years and will be around for more years to come.