As Nike Tweaks Its Tagline, a Look Back at the Dark Origins of ‘Just Do It’

Nike started a brand new chapter of its personal historical past this week when it tinkered with the slogan that has served it properly for 37 years. Launched in 1988, “Simply Do It” was among the many finest recognized catchlines in advertising historical past, having fun with an 82.3% recognition fee, in keeping with a 2018 ballot by Survata. If the change is a daring transfer, it’s additionally a measured one. “Simply Do It” has change into “Why Do It,” however the important part—“do it”—stays.Principally forgotten, nevertheless, is the way it bought there within the first place. “Simply Do It” was an adaptation of “Let’s do it,” the ultimate phrases spoken by spree killer Gary Gilmore shortly earlier than his execution in 1977.Had nearly every other advert govt pitched that one, it’d by no means have made it out of the convention room. However on this case, the adman was Dan Wieden, cofounder of Wieden+Kennedy.In 1988, Wieden & Kennedy (the plus signal would come later) was a six-year-old agency taking nice care of its marquee consumer, Nike, which Wieden and Dave Kennedy had taken with them after they left rival store William Cain. As Weiden recalled in a 2015 interview with design journal Dezeen, by 1988, Nike had lastly thrown critical cash at a brand new marketing campaign—and he’d been up all night time worrying. Wieden had put 5 groups on the job, every creating its personal spot. The adverts have been high-quality, however didn’t operate coherently as a gaggle.“We’d like a tagline to tug these items collectively,” Wieden thought.It was then the artistic exec recalled a quote carried broadly in nationwide media 11 years earlier than. In 1977, the state of Utah imposed the demise penalty on Gilmore, who’d murdered a gas-station attendant and a lodge supervisor. Gilmore’s execution made nationwide information as a result of he’d refused all appeals and opted for a firing squad. Shortly earlier than the riflemen took purpose, the warden requested Gilmore if he had any final phrases. “Gary seemed up for an prolonged interval,” witness Lawrence Schiller instructed The Salt Lake Metropolis Tribune. “I consider his phrases [were], ‘Let’s do it.’”Why would Weiden have recalled a tidbit so obscure when making a tagline for Nike? For a time, Gilmore had lived in Portland, town the place each Weiden+Kennedy and Nike are based mostly. Norman Mailer had additionally received a Pulitzer for The Executioner’s Track, his novel based mostly on Gilmore’s story. Wieden, who died in 2022, insisted that his partial adoption of the road had no social or political implications.“I like[d] the ‘do it’ half,” he mentioned in Doug Pray’s 2009 documentary Artwork & Copy. “None of us actually paid that a lot consideration. We thought, ‘yeah, that’d work.’”Certainly, the slogan did work—even when it additionally left the consumer holding some dialectical baggage. Liz Dolan, Nike’s vp of world advertising in 1988, instructed Pray, “I’m positive they didn’t need anybody to essentially know.” (Nike didn’t instantly reply to ADWEEK’s request for remark.) A profitable property with troubling origins is hardly a brand new paradox in company America, after all.“Many long-established manufacturers have skeletons within the closet,” mentioned Ericho Communications CEO Eric Yaverbaum, writer of Public Relations for Dummies. “Leaders is probably not chargeable for the actions of their predecessors, however they nonetheless profit from the legacies these actions created.”It’s unclear how a lot Wieden might have even instructed his consumer about his inspiration for the slogan, however one factor is past dispute: Nike selected properly in working with it.Widen would lengthy bear in mind how Nike founder Phil Knight wasn’t a fan of the slogan at first, telling him: “We don’t want that shit.”To which Wieden responded: “Simply belief me on this one.”