"Winning Takes Care of Everything". By Tiger Woods, Barack Obama and Bhagavan Sri Krishna

Tiger Woods on the importance of winning

How far does one go to win? 

As far as one possibly can. 

Most sportsmen would agree with Tiger Woods on that point. 

Win gracefully if that is your style. Win ugly if not. Test the edges of the rules. Win! 

This might stick in the throat of nice, well brought up, middle class boys like this blogger. But fair enough. Tiger Woods is a pro. He is playing hardball. So are his competitors. Maybe winning does take care of everything. For Tiger. 

How well does that generalize? 

Depends. 

On how well winning is defined. And on how well-defined the rules are. 

In most walks of life both winning and the rules of play are very loosely defined. 

Barack Obama with Tim Kaine
On the importance of winning

So how hard does one play? 

Public life is a sphere where hardball might be a bad idea, where the unwritten rules are more important than in sports, where winning doesn’t take care of everything. 

So, it was interesting to learn that Nobel Peace prize laurate ex-President Barack Obama endorses hardball. 

Apparently he told Tim Kaine, then candidate Hillary Clinton’s VP nominee “Tim, remember, this is no time to be a purist. You've got to keep a fascist out of the White House". 

Barack thinks that when the stakes are high, purity is less important than winning. 

This is not a recent question. 

Bhagavan Sri Krishna played hardball. 

Arjuna asked Bhagavan Sri Krishna about dharma at Kurukshetra. Bhagavan Sri Krishna replied with his actions. Whether it was forcing Karna to waste Indra’s Shakthi on Ghatothkacha, obscuring the sun with his Sudarshana-chakra so Arjuna could avenge Abhimanyu’s death, or orchestrating Yudhishthira’s only lie so Dhrishtadhyumna could kill Guru Dronacharya, Bhagavan Sri Krishna was willing to play hardball. The stakes were high enough to justify this. Winning mattered more than purity.

In contexts that are more important than sports, maybe winning doesn’t take care of everything. 

But winning does take care of a lot of things.

Bhagawan Sri Krishna with Arjuna
On the importance of winning

"You were born a daughter" - a retro Nike print ad

This post is to share the retro Nike print advertisement below. I came across these images on a blog called ShoeGirl Corner while looking for background info on Nike advertising for my last blogpost. Loved the advert.

It does feel retro.

Does anybody do eight page print spreads in glossy magazines anymore? Including an entire page that has just five words?

The feminism doesn't feel retro, though.

Women as still often seen and portrayed (and see and portray themselves) in relational terms, as mother/ daughter/ wife/ sister/ friend, as significant others. There still are feminist breakthroughs to be had in taking out that scaffolding and portraying women as individuals, as protagonists, as heroes of their own stories.

Is it retro for Nike to feature normal people, like the soccer moms and school teachers who actually pay for Nike products, rather than Wimbledon champions and Olympic gold medallists? I hope not. 

Is Nike’s Just do it the worst tagline ever? Or the best?

Just do it. By Serena Williams.

Say you were Nike’s Chief Marketing Officer. 

Say you were searching for a tagline that would define your brand. 

Just do it. By Alex Morgan.

Would you choose a line associated with good karma, with success, with victory? Or would you choose a line spoken by a notorious serial killer facing the death penalty? 

You’d choose a line associated with success, right? Or maybe not. 

Nike’s famous Just do it slogan is derived from the last words of the serial killer Gary Gilmore.

The story is that the unrepentant serial killer was facing a firing squad and was asked if he had any last words. He said, “Let’s do it”. 

Dan Weiden, the head of the ad agency handling the Nike account, took Gilmore’s words and changed “Let’s do it” to "Just do it". The rest is history. Just do it remains one of the most powerful and successful marketing campaigns ever. 

To be fair, "Just do it" is not really comparable to my previous post about VW Phaeton. “Let’s do it” and “Just do it” could be general purpose English words in a way that Phaeton clearly is not. But the interesting point, the counter-point to the VW Phaeton story, is that good ideas need not originate from sources with good karma.

Let's do it. By Gary Gilmore.
On his way to being executed.