Nike N7 Mock Awareness Campaign
This Nike N7 awareness campaign for National Native American Heritage Month was created by a team of four public relations students at the University of Oregon in the J453 Strategic Planning and Cases course.
In 2019, November was proclaimed National Native American Heritage Month, also known as Indigenous People’s Month. Unfortunately, it often passes unnoticed by many. Indigenous peoples have experienced consistent oppression across the United States and Canada since the beginning of colonization. From the beginning of the brutal colonization of Indigenous peoples in 1492 and their constant displacement and mistreatment since then, it’s become apparent that bringing awareness to the cruel history of the treatment of Indigenous people is imperative. Nike N7 has the opportunity to grow and bring awareness to the lack of Indigenous representation everywhere, namely in sports, business, media, government, et cetera. To do so, Nike N7 needs to establish a stronger presence in the media and reach its target public more effectively.
Nike N7 is a sportswear collection inspired by the Native American wisdom of the seven generations. N7 was started in 2009 by Sam McCracken. Through the N7 collection, he began launching products representing the rich Indigenous history that lacks awareness in our society. Native American artists design products in the N7 collection and they serve as a way to amplify under-represented voices.
Since N7’s launch, its main goal has been to support Indigenous communities and amplify Native American voices in the United States. Moreover, N7 strives to showcase Indigenous talent and get Native American youth moving through the Nike N7 fund, which has awarded more than $8 million in grants. Under the leadership of Sam McCracken, Nike N7 creates unique sportswear products and represents over 270 communities.
Nike has well-renowned international success, but products in the N7 collection are solely targeted toward consumers in the United States as it relates to U.S. history. Although Nike N7 is a fantastic collection with positive goals and sound strategies, it could use additional growth and positive press. It has received some criticism for exploiting Indigenous talent and participating in performative activism to make a profit.
Furthermore, Nike N7 could benefit from using National Native American Heritage Month as an opportunity to raise awareness for Indigenous communities while promoting its products. Other potential opportunities for growth include working with university sports teams as they did with Oklahoma State and joining the movement that aims to change racist mascots in American sports.
Our goal is to expand our consumer base and ultimately raise awareness for the Nike N7 fund, Indigenous communities and Native American Heritage Month in November. NIKE, Inc. (NKE) is already at an advantage due to its worldwide popularity as a leading sports apparel and footwear company. Its audience is much larger than most companies, and many consumers are deeply committed to the brand. Therefore, Nike N7 has the opportunity to tap into that and gain a bigger following. Nike primarily targets female and male consumers between 15 and 40 years old. We plan to target diverse consumers regarding race, ethnicity and gender.
Tactic #1: Create an Instagram account. Start increasing follower count to reach 75 thousand followers by November 2023.
Tactic #2: Create a Facebook page to raise awareness for Nike N7.
Tactic #3: Implement Influencers across our socials.
Kyrie Irving - Brooklyn Nets NBA
Jude Schimmel - New York Liberty WNBA
Madison Hammond - Ol Reign WNSL
Taboo Nawasha - Rapper, Black Eyed Peas
Tactic #4: Advertise the Nike N7 Instagram page and collection on Nike’s main Instagram page.
This is a mockup of the N7 Instagram account and page. The posts will include photos of shoes and clothing from the N7 Collection, some of which will be modeled by our N7 ambassadors and champions. We will also have messaging regarding Indigenous culture for Native American Heritage Month. The Instagram bio features the N7 tagline, “See me, See Us.”
Tactic #1: Partner with Netflix to create and feature our documentary on their platform. We will benefit from their advertising techniques. When Netflix purchases the documentary, the money will go to the Nike N7 fund.
Tactic #2: Include in-depth interviews with Indigenous peoples and videography of activities that are a part of Indigenous culture. This videography shows a need for the Nike N7 fund while highlighting the Indigenous artistry behind our collection.
Tactic #3: Advertise our documentary through all Nike social media accounts.
Tactic #4: Reach out to journalists to advertise our new documentary. We will host events throughout the United States that involve showings of our documentary to get media attention and raise awareness for N7.
This is a mockup cover page for our documentary. The documentary would feature Indigenous artists, activists, athletes and current social issues relevant to Indigenous communities. It would be paid for by Nike N7 and produced entirely by Indigenous people to raise awareness for the Nike N7 fund, Indigenous communities and Native American Heritage Month in November.
This is a mockup of the Nike N7 website donation page with a donate button. The purpose of this page is to encourage worldwide donations for the Nike N7 fund and ultimately increase support for Indigenous youth.
Evaluation Plan
Objective 1: We will analyze how many followers we have on our Instagram and Facebook pages at the end of November 2023. If we have 75 thousand or more followers, the social media campaign will be deemed a success. However, we can adjust accordingly if we do not meet the goal.
Objective 2: Our team wants to increase the N7 fund by 25% over the next two years. This objective will be completed and successful if we can finish the production of the documentary and get the fund to 10 million by November 2024. If the documentary isn’t completed by then, we will continue to work on it until it is done.
This is a relatively low-budget campaign for a company as large as Nike. The base cost is close to 11 million. Depending on how many TV advertisements we create, it will increase by the set cost per advertisement listed above. The cost of the documentary is inclusive of film festivals and incident costs. All content creation and webpage design will be done in-house to cut down on prices.
This will be a 26-month long campaign. The majority of the campaign will entail producing the documentary and preparing for the release of the documentary. The adjustments to the webpage and creation of the social media pages will happen almost immediately. Social media advertisements will be released once we’ve completed the webpage and social media pages. TV advertisements will air eight months before the release of the documentary.
Link to the final campaign plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sc3Rx1WKv1mr8bdWcWkQVJWSoAaqFYMEngd7VNBcJ8c/edit?usp=sharing