Increase the investment in football, Nike "rescue yourself"

Nike football has returned to the "spotlight" from the Champions League final to the Soviet Union and the Club World Cup debut, this summer is filled with a strong "football flavor".

Amid this wave of popularity, Nike's "presence" has also increased significantly. The triangle shield logo embedded in Swoosh is frequently seen in sneakers, jerseys, advertising films and offline activities. This millennium was once a symbol of the Nike football category and officially returned after years of silence. The choice of this time point was not accidental.

Against the backdrop of the dense international football calendar and the re-spread of the blockcore craze, Nike obviously hopes to interact with the community with the help of event exposure and reactivate the football product line that has been silent for a period of time.

In fact, from the competitive arena to the consumer side, multiple actions show that Nike is systematically restarting its football business's brand narrative and product layout.

The European Cup of Women's Football Team is approaching, Nike is the first to release a new national team jersey with the slogan "FEAR NOTHING", strengthening its brand posture in women's football narrative; the poisonous bee series has been reshaped, and the color matching returns to the original classic visual language; the latest Phantom 6 Dark Evil series is starring Haaland in the commercial "Feed Me with the Ball", continuing Nike's usual marketing strategy of binding the shoe style through the stars, and also injecting more clear personality recognition into this product line.

The more emotionally directive is the restart of the T90 series, which is launched simultaneously with the offline cultural space "Block 90", and through the composite content of sneaker history, jersey exhibitions and interactive activities, it evokes the common memory and identity of a generation of fans.

From the return of the logo to the series of replicas, Nike is gradually awakening his football memory.

But behind this is actually a reflection and return to his own football business.

Nike football, what's wrong?

Compared with other brands that entered the football market earlier, Nike's football story started late but developed very quickly.

Nike's football business is officially known to the public to date back to 1982, when the entire Aston Villa team won the European Championship in Nike, making the brand debut in the top stadium.

The real "late-up" was in the mid-1990s: Nike took the Brazilian team from Umbro, and successively launched the exclusive Mercurial of Tiempo Premier and Ronaldo, which enabled the differentiation of product functions and accelerated the global layout. Since then, Nike has gradually bound the shoe model to the player's characteristics and built a product matrix that combines performance and narrative.

On this basis, Nike has also built a highly mature cultural communication system.

Since "Good vs Evil" in 1996, Nike has successfully entered the minds of fans through "emotional advertising". Whether it is the street aesthetics in "Airport" and "The Cage", or the subjective perspective and growth imagination in "Joga Bonito" and "Take It to the Next Level", Nike uses images to tell the common language belonging to players, fans and adolescence, and uses emotions as an anchor to build a brand ecosystem full of belonging.

It can be said that in that era when short videos and social media algorithms were not yet amplified, it was Nike who took the lead in shaping the aesthetic standards of football culture, packaging football from a competitive sport into an identity symbol and lifestyle.

Nike also completed the leap from "later" to "cultural leader".

However, in the past few years, with the shift in Nike's overall brand strategy and the strategic contraction of resource allocation, Nike's potential energy has also begun to decline significantly. In the jersey sponsorship market, Nike has successively given up cooperation with traditional giant clubs including Manchester United, Manchester City, Portugal, and other national teams. The sponsorship status of several top leagues has been gradually replaced, and the market coverage has declined significantly.

At the same time, adidas and Puma took advantage of the opportunity to expand, especially the former's investment in cultural assets such as national team jerseys and retro shoe reproduction, which has made shoes such as Samba an important growth curve for brands.

New and old brands such as Castore, New Balance, Umbro also erode the mid-waist market with the "high share" and "strong customization" strategies. On the other hand, the product line has shrunk, and series such as T90 and CTR360 that have been widely recognized by fans have been suspended one after another, and they chose to deal with a larger market with fewer SKUs. At the same time, although the new generation of stars such as Mbappe and Haaland signed Nike, they did not form a strong binding relationship with their product line and brand like Ronaldo.

The deeper problem is that the cultural language that Nike football once proud of has gradually failed to keep up with the pace in the era of social media. To put it bluntly, Nike football can't empathize with the fans. Nike, who has re-arranged troops, wants to return to the center of the field, the stall in the football field is not an accident, but also reflects the brand's strategic turmoil in recent years.

During the term of former CEO Tang Ruoxue, Nike vigorously promoted digital transformation and DTC model expansion, strengthened high gross profit, and compressed resource investment in some non-core sports categories. Football, as a professional sports event with high investment and low returns and long cycles, has gradually been marginalized in this round of strategic center of gravity..

This financial efficiency-oriented path has been recognized in the capital market for short-term recognition, but it also has obvious side effects: the brand's "sports attributes" are essentially weakened, and the "professional trust" is constantly diluted, and it faces growth bottlenecks in multiple core markets, and the brand's user stickiness and cultural appeal are simultaneously declining.

Under this background, the new CEO He Yanfeng clearly proposed to "return to the essence of sports" after taking office, emphasizing technological innovation, professional scenarios and sports spirit, as the cornerstone of Nike's recovery of growth and brand identity.

Football, as the most influential and most user-engagement sports in the world, has naturally become one of the priority sectors to "repair".

This strategy adjustment was quickly reflected in the overall resource scheduling of the brand: last year, Nike regained the rights to sponsor the German national team's jersey, renewed Barcelona with the largest contract in football history, further stabilizing the deep binding with European giants such as Paris; at the product level, it launched an exclusive triangle shield logo, restarted the sentimental product line such as T90; at the content level, it revived the brand expression with players as the core.

This series of high-rise and high-speed action is not only a rich product portfolio, but also a rebuilding attempt by Nike to "professional trust" of the brand in the current sports context.

However, it must be pointed out that Nike football's "return" is currently more like a system repair, and its core play is still a "second call" based on past successful experience: use emotional products to stimulate the emotions of old users, use star binding to strengthen product personality, and use visual systems to build professional symbols.

But in today's market with faster pace, more fragmented culture, and more fragmented media, these techniques have long become the basic actions of all brands and no longer have overwhelming advantages. Especially when feelings are no longer scarce and classics have become collective memories, can Nike find a new narrative method?

Just like a team reappearing after changing coaches and adjusting tactics, Nike Football is also reorganizing its formation. But just as the evolution of football tactics has never stopped, the outcome of a brand depends on whether it can establish a new tacit understanding, adapt to new rhythms, and play a new way of playing.

Nike football, there are still many tough battles to face.