Storytelling – the Condensed Story of Nike

In a previous post, I touched on why stories and storytelling is so important for the long term future of many businesses and individuals. Having an easy to understand, believable and interesting story which survives the test of time is worth a fortune for so many brands. Your ability to get any message across to your audience is massively improved when told in a story format, one which your audience, team or prospects can buy into and share. You’ll find stories and storytelling behind so many of the brands you know, love and may even be using, reading from or wearing right now. The ones that died ... might have died because they didn’t capture the imagination... they didn’t have stories! Here’s one I love about the early startup days of a little known sportswear brand…

Storytelling - the condensed Story of Nike

Way back when I was growing up, I was dead keen on tennis and rugby. (And Garfield the comic strip...) Trainers were definitely not fashion items. Some kids who had forex and who went shopping in South Africa or overseas had Adidas... I just bought sports shoes - was the word trainers even a word then? Dunno. Anyway, this story is about a quite successful guy called Bill Bowerman. One day, his wife was preparing waffles for breakfast, and she pours batter on a waffle iron. He said, “Wait a second.” He came home that afternoon after track practice, and brought this liquid rubber stuff. He poured it in the waffle iron and it hardened. He said, “This is going to be the sole of my new running shoe.” The first Nike running shoe was a waffle sole. All of a sudden he had this idea. He was supported by Phil Knight, who was one of his graduate students, and they started this running company called Nike.

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And one more story from Nike

The story about one of the worlds most iconic logo's is just as simple. Apparently, these guys were in a tight time deadline, they had about half-hour left before going to print. They needed a logo of some form ASAP. When they said 'let's just go with a swoosh. That's right, the most iconic logo in the world came about almost by chance. With both of these stories, everyone involved just went for it... They, JUST DID IT.