Nike Launches New Campaign Featuring Realistic Women

Nike Taking Different Approach With Ad Campaign

Nike has launched a new ad campaign, via Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, that “celebrates women’s big butts, thunder thighs and tomboy knees,” according to Rich Thomaselli of AD AGE. The ads are “authoritative and bold, with a bit of humor. The six different images represent six different parts of the body, including a posterior in an ad that shows a well-rounded bum and copy that reads: ‘My Butt is big and round like the letter C, and 10,000 lunges have made it rounder but not smaller. ... Those who might scorn it are invited to kiss it. Just do it.’” Nike U.S. Advertising Dir Nancy Monsarrat said that the campaign is “an extension of the ‘If You Let Me Play’ campaign geared toward women that Nike ran in the late 1990s — with one exception.” Monsarrat: “We never talked specifically about women’s bodies, and that’s a hot topic right now.” Thomaselli notes there will be no TV ads in the campaign, “which is designed to drive the audience to NikeWomen.com and, ultimately, its fitness apparel.” The campaign does include short films on NikeWomen.com that feature “women discussing topics such as their bodies and working out” (AD AGE, 8/15 issue).

WHEN DOVES FLY: Thomaselli notes the Nike campaign follows a similar effort from Dove, which “touched a cultural hot-button and set off a flood of media coverage culminating with models from the ads appearing on the cover of People magazine.” Glamour VP & Publisher William Wackermann, whose magazine has run both campaigns, said, “Dove was a wonderful campaign, and Nike is just brilliant. The copy is clever and fresh” (AD AGE, 8/15). In Boston, Donna Goodison writes while Nike uses “‘real’ women in its campaign, their bodies still are toned and enviable.” The six women in the Dove ads are sizes 6-14 and are shown in “white bras and panties sporting pillowy paunches and thick thighs” (BOSTON HERALD, 8/16).

Dove's Effort Lays Groundwork For Nike Campaign