Photo by Amada MA on Unsplash | iStock.com/winhorse
Nike’s Olympics ad, “Winning Isn’t for Everyone,” has proved divisive, with fans praising the message around grit and determination and critics calling out its ruthlessness and disrespect of sportsmanship.
The 90-second ad, which has been viewed millions of times, starts with the voice of actor Willem Dafoe asking in an arrogant tone: "Am I a bad person?"
The screen is then graced with visuals of sports superstars like basketball’s LeBron James, runner Sha’Carri Richardson, tennis icon Serena Williams, French footballer Kylian Mbappé, and more. Most are seen scowling in the throes of competition.
“I'm single-minded. I'm deceptive. I'm obsessive. I'm selfish. Does that make me a bad person?” the narrator continues, eventually raising his voice in haughty disbelief, exclaiming, “I'm delusional. I'm maniacal. You think I'm a bad person? Tell me!”
After an epic sequence of athletes celebrating in competition, the ad concludes with the phrase, "Winning isn't for everyone."
“This is about celebrating the voice of the athlete,” says Nicole Graham, chief marketing officer at Nike, in a statement. “It’s a story about what it takes to be the best. The legacies that have yet to be shaped. And the dreams that will be made real. It reminds the world that there's nothing wrong with wanting to win.”
The campaign, which also includes a significant out-of-home component, arrives as Nike is spending more on the Olympics this year than any other previous games as the brand struggles to return to growth. Beyond developing breakthrough innovations, CEO John Donahoe said during the company’s fiscal 2024 Q3 earnings call in March that Nike’s brand marketing “must become bolder and more distinctive,” with an emphasis on “fewer, bigger stories with greater reach.”
Among the critics of the Olympics campaign, Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote, “Nike is preaching a gospel of winning at any cost, of suppressing every instinct for decency and magnanimity. It is hard to imagine a message more hostile to good sportsmanship and the Olympic spirit.”
Fernando Desouches, managing director at the advertising agency BBD Perfect Storm, wrote for The Drum, “The ad channels the no-holds-barred energy around winning a defining ongoing political trope and a departure from the more empathetic, inclusive messaging we’ve seen from Nike over the years. It feels particularly charged in the run up to the US election, and, at a time when collaboration and empathy seem critical to solve the world’s big problems, is this the right message for a brand with as much cultural cache as Nike?”
Joe Foley, editor at Creative Bloq, wrote, “It's powerfully visceral and sparks a conversation about sporting greatness, but it suggests Nike itself doesn't know what that means anymore.”
Among the fans, Ad Age described the effort as “an inspiring campaign that illuminates the competitiveness of athletes arriving in Paris over the next few days, and motivation for anyone who has a dream of competing.”
Jeff Beer, at Fast Company, wrote, “After decades of dominance, this recent dip in performance appears to have sparked up the swoosh’s own competitive fires. This new campaign then, marks a return of the ‘f**k you’ attitude in Nike advertising that taps into its hardcore athlete pedigree.”
Taking a different take, Scoop Jackson, a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, believes critics are “mistaking execution for effectiveness” in how the ad stimulates debates around winning. He wrote, “The purpose of the ‘Winning Isn’t for Everyone’ campaign isn’t to make us agree with, like or embrace it or its messaging. Its purpose is to make us feel. To make us react. To make we as a society obsessed with sports to use sports to have a greater conversation about the meaning of sports and life. With the image of a swoosh at the end. Period.”