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