1. WOKE ADVERTISING
1.1. CAUSE RELATED MARKETING
1.1.1. First, how did gender influence the communica tion between the creative team and the Nike exec utives? Second , how did their communication influence the creative process that shaped the branded messages within early Nike women's advertising, if at all? To that end, this study explores the development of the Nike women's sub-brand as a narrative process. Ultimately, early Nike women's advertising came to exemplify the intersection where "social and sport idea ls clash" Grow 313
1.1.2. Nike has recognized this cultural ambiguity concerning girls' participation in sport and has positioned itself as a solution to help ease our collective conscience (and sell more 'swooshes' in the process). These campaigns have been dubbed 'ads with a conscience' or 'cause-related marketing' ,1 a phenomenon in which Nike (and others trying to replicate its success) associates itself with a good cause in order to gamer public support and sales (Gladstone, 1997). In these campaigns, Nike's cause is empowering girls through sport participation. - LUCAS 149
2. QUESTIONS THAT AUTHORS ASKED THAT I AM REVISITING
2.1. Today, the women's sub-brand remains at W+K. It has been somew hat absorbed into the Nike parent brand under line extension s for various sports , not unlike men's branding. There are still some women's sub-brand campaigns. The Body Parts campaign in 2005 , which focused on the celebratio n of women's muscular body parts, is one example. However, it is safe to say, that dur ing the past ten years the women 's sub-brand has had a significantly quieter and substantially less gendered voice . Ten years later, the voice of women's advertising has been brought more in line with the patriarchal parent brand, articulating the power of hegemony. - Grow 339 DOES THIS STILL HOLD TODAY? (I DONT THINK SO)
2.2. Cause-related marketing may work for Nike, but what about the cause? Does Nike really help empower girls? I argue that Nike structures girls' entrance into sport in such a way as to disempower them. Their lack of agency is demonstrated by having to ask permission to play; by having to wait for someone else to determine whether they will be given a ball or a doll; and by being told the right way to play basketball. Is Nike really helping to empower girls through sport, or does its framing of this message ultimately disempower them? - LUCAS 162
3. W+K AGENCY
3.1. For nearly eight years, from 1990-1997, the almost exclusively female creative team from W+ K created ads for the Nike women's sub-brand that often challenged the social constructions of gender and sports. In the early 1990s, a female point of view was rarely reflected in advertising. While the creative team and Nike executives had the same objective of increasing market share among women, each had strongly differing views about how to achieve this. - Grow 312
4. ANTENARRATIVE
4.1. Antenarrative, on the other hand, is "living story telling that is frag mented, polyphonic (ma ny voiced) and collect ive ly produced" (Boje, p. I). The antenarrative, expressed visually and/or verbally, is a fluid collective response to lived exper iences . Brands and the adve rtisi ng that support them are also fluid. Like the antenarrative, ads are about crea ting and susta ining fluid openings. I find the use of antenarrative a compelling theoret ical refere nce for this case study because of its living and intertextual qual ities. According to Boje (200 1) the ante narrative has five dimensio ns: (a) it comes before whatever frame is imposed upon it, (b) it is spec ulative and often ambiguous, always questio ning what is happe ning , (c) it directs our attention to the flow, aski ng us to make sense of lived experie nce beyo nd the narrative, (d) it relates best to audience fragments, and (e) the antenarra tive reflects a consensual narrative as a collective memory. From this point of view, antenarra tive forms a strong communicative counterpo int to branding. - Grow 317
5. BRANDING
5.1. PARENT-BRAND/SUB BRAND
5.1.1. Feminist antenarrative is best articulated by considering the intersec tion of three feminist theoretical constructs: organized dissonance (Ashcraft, 2006), organizations as structures that reproduce gender relations (Acker, 2003; Kolb, et al., 2003), and the sequestering of women's stories (Clair, 1993). Layering these constructs with postmodem branding theory, with antenarrative as a foundatio n, it is evide nt that early Nike women's advertising created a profound discord with the masculi ne parent organization and its parent brand. The only way to negotiate this dissonance was for the Nike parent brand to assertive ly maintain its patriarchal role within a hegemonic framework of "the institutional arm of male dominance" (Ashcraft, 2006, p. 6 1). Thus, Nike adapted the role of hegemonic supporter. Nike supported women in their quest for equity as if it were a gender-neutral organization, as long as women and the ads that were directed toward them conformed to hegemonic ideals. Early Nike women' s advertisng was a "storied soup" (Boje , 200 I, p. 78) of antenarrtives that resisted hegemonic masculine notion s of femininity by representing too much female human truth . In the end, the sacred living women's brand sustained by its emotional promises of empowerment and equity ultimately were seen as pinkifying the masculine Nike parent brand .- Grow 338
5.2. POST-MODERN BRANDING THEORY
5.2.1. In short, brands are the sum of all impressions, includ ing their emotional promises and consumers' experiences of them as sacred entities and living things. Together, these three branding hallmarks create potent advertising messages . Brands are sacred and alive, just like the cultures in which they thrive. "A brand is made in your mind . .. like a badge that lends you a certain identity" (Travis, 2000, p. 15). At the same time, the interface of the brand is framed by communicative boundaries that both connect and separate (Rodowick, 1995). The "Just do it" tagline is a powerful example of connection between the parent brand and the women's sub-brand. - Grow 314
5.3. The swoosh also stands for, among other things, capitalism, celebrity (see Cole and Hribar, 1995), hegemonic masculinity, power, and elite athletes. Given Nike's recent advertising campaigns targeting the girls' and women's market, Nike apparently would also like the swoosh to stand for promoting girls' and women's participation in sport and fitness. - LUCAS 150
6. ADS
6.1. WHAT WILL THEY SAY ABOUT YOU?
6.2. NEVER STOP WINNING
6.3. DREAM CRAZIER
7. CELEB ATHLETES STARRING
7.1. In popular culture female athletes who are portrayed as “just doing it” are often romanticized as the new representatives for the girl-power movement. Female athletes such as Brandi Chastain, whose sports-bra-clad body was featured on the cover of Newsweek after the 1999 USA Women’s soccer team won the World Cup with the announcement that “Girls Rule!,” are held up for girls and young women as role models of female strength and assertiveness. Narratives of girl power circulate and compete for salience with other popular-culture images in asserting what it means to be a (White) woman and just what exactly counts as sport and feminism (Cole & Hribar, 1995). Nike has both contributed to and capitalized on these discourses in a number of ways, for example, in their appropriation of the insult “you throw/kick/run like a girl” (featured on a t-shirt with a girl kicking a goal) and also in their mid-1990s advertising campaign, “If You Let Me Play.” -COOKY P.158
7.1.1. CAN REVISIT RACE THING IF NEEDED