Brand Management Nike Brand Management Nike\'s Progression
Nike's progression from selling tennis shoes out of the back of founder and CEO Phil Knight's car to one of the most respected and known brands globally initially began with naming the company after the Greek Goddess of victory. Transitioning from being Bleu Ribbon Sports to Nike also led to the company going public and gaining the necessary funds to finance growth and expansion. It was after these significant events that Nike initiated the strategy of having celebrity spokespersons with Steve Prefontaine, Olympic distance runner from Oregon, and Ilie Natase, world-known Romanian tennis player the first that the company signed (Pillot, 2005). Nike quickly progressed in their strategies of relying on celebrity endorsers, creating entire product lines around Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and other superstars in professional sports. Nike moved quickly from selling footwear to accessories and then on to creating products for entire sports categories. This portfolio-based approach to managing their branding strategy has given Nike greater flexibility in defining which celebrity athletes they will rely on at specific stages of their product lifecycles (Collins, 2003). It has also given them a greater level of autonomy in how they manage the financial performance of each brand over time as well, providing greater agility and flexibility in defining product lifecycles and how they choose to promote and change product strategies over time. Figure 1, Boston Consulting Group's Matrix Analysis of Nike's Product Line shows how each of the brands and their respective product lines are performing today. The ability of Nike to continually evolve the women's fitness, Start, Converse and Fitness Dance products is to a large extent defined by how innovative their product strategies are in each of these areas (Collins, 2003).