Everyone
Nike dropped its latest Olympics campaign, “Winning Isn’t For Everyone,” and you don’t have to look far to find critiques—especially criticisms.
The campaign is more brash than recent Nike activations and decidedly far away from the “sports is for everyone” message many of their competitors are using. Nike, of course, has run that message previously, perhaps arguably the first major consumer brand to do so.
A good deal of discussion seems to be around the fact Nike has pivoted away from that, whether that’s good for a brand that’s losing market share, and whether people like the ad.
Those discussions are fine, but the more interesting question, it seems, is what the ad campaign says about us right now.
Ad campaigns flop all the time, of course, but Nike—especially in its Olympic campaigns—doesn’t often miss the mark. Which is why it’s worth looking outside the campaign to understand its message.
Take a look at Nike’s last two summer Olympic campaigns (“Unlimited Future” in 2016 and “Play New” in 2021), and you’ll find inspirational, positive messages of overcoming adversity and the anticipation of competition.
If anything, the tone of those campaigns paved the way for a landscape in which Hoka, Lululemon and others followed suit with “everyone is an athlete”-type messaging.
This Nike campaign, though, has a—let’s call it—rawer undertone of what’s needed to actually accomplish what the previous campaigns celebrated, and that feels bigger than just “Nike needs to be edgy to regain market share.”
It’s a counter to what they popularized, and, taken to its extreme, it is a criticism of present-day “everyone gets a trophy” culture.
A cultural anchor doesn’t make a move like this just because its stock is flagging. (Nike, in fact, has been through this before; it has seen stock performance decline by more than 40% four separate times in its history.)
It makes a move like that, because it sees an opportunity to be early—and therefore most influential—on the next, big cultural mood.
Just like it’s done before.