First of all, the innovative Nike
Founded on 1964 by accountant phil knight and sports coach Bill Ballman, Nike has become a leading world-class brand. At that time, Mr Knight only spent $35 to ask a student to design Nike's logo, and now the value of the famous hook logo has exceeded $654.38+0 billion. After 40 years of development, Nike has become a business legend. His success is called the business model of virtual production. Nike controls the market with excellent product design and excellent marketing techniques, and outsources the production links.
Many enterprises are imitating Nike's virtual production, but few are successful. Why? It should be said that it is not the mystery of virtual production, but because everyone knows that the production link is at the lowest end of the "smile curve" and the profit is the thinnest. Everyone wants to develop to the high end of the curve. Design and marketing itself is a very creative field. In order to maintain competitive advantage, enterprises must maintain continuous and excellent innovation ability. Behind Nike's virtual production is the innovative spirit respected by the two founders.
A well-known story is that Mr. Bill Ballman got inspiration from his wife's mold for baking waffles, and finally designed a new sneaker sole. Today, Nike's product design room is still called "innovative kitchen". Innovative kitchens are off-limits for most visitors, even most employees of Nike. The company wrote in a ridiculous tone on the sign at the gate: "The kitchen is very important, and no one can enter." In this sports shoes-centered think tank, designers look for creative inspiration from various fields, from Irish-style architecture to the arc on the violin made by the stradivari family. A wall in the office shows every pair of AirJordan basketball shoes made by Nike, while the workshop is full of design sketches of new sports shoes.
The more profound innovation comes from phil knight, known as the father of Nike and also recognized as marketing guru. An American sports industry consultant said with emotion: Mr Knight can be said to have started a new industry by his own efforts. It is he who makes athletes become stars and rich, sportswear become fashionable goods, and a small enterprise becomes a big international company.
Nike was the first manufacturer to become famous through celebrity endorsement. As early as 1973, it hired long-distance runner Steve Prefontein to speak for its sports shoes. 1985, Jordan was hired as a spokesperson, which made Nike famous and prosperous. And Nike is also the first manufacturer to combine pop music with sports marketing. 1987 The Beatles music was first used in Nike sports shoes advertisements, which caused a sensation.
Second, the change of marketing organization.
In the past few years, Nike has vigorously expanded its product line and added new brands. Nike's main product used to be basketball shoes, but in recent years, it has launched a series of golf sporting goods, with Tiger Woods as the spokesperson, and at the same time strengthened the promotion of football shoes to cater to the increase of football population. At present, the turnover of football sporting goods series has reached 654.38 billion US dollars, accounting for 25% of the global market, and the market share in Europe is as high as 35%. Nike has successively acquired the first sports shoes brand COLEHAAN, BAUER, Converse and HURLY, a well-known casual shoes brand, allowing all well-known brands to operate independently and achieved good results.
There is no doubt about Nike's achievements in sports marketing, but the doubts about Nike's marketing have never stopped. There are several opinions that Nike has to seriously consider: first, with the expansion of the brand, the Nike brand is no longer "cool"; Second, Nike's style of spending a lot of money on marketing exposes loopholes in marketing management; Third, Nike's marketing localization in emerging markets is not enough, and the marketing effect is not ideal.
According to the latest annual financial report released in June, Nike's annual operating income reached $654.38+063 billion, up 9%, net income reached $654.38+05 billion, up 7%, and net income per share reached $2.93, up 654.38+065.438+0%, which is another record achievement. But as a public company with publicly listed shares, growth is the eternal pressure, and Wall Street only pays attention to where your future growth comes from. MarkParker, Chairman and CEO of Nike, is full of confidence: Nike is now facing unprecedented development opportunities, and we have a unique ability to turn our insight into consumers into excellent products, which is an important reason why Nike has become a global industry leader.
Parker's self-confidence stems from Nike's marketing organizational changes. Last August, Charlie Denson, president of Nike brand, announced that Nike would carry out marketing organization and management changes to strengthen the connection between Nike brand and emerging markets, core products and consumer market segments. The implementation of this reform has gradually transformed Nike from a product-driven business model supported by brand innovation into a consumer-centered organizational form, and achieved rapid and effective growth through global category management of key market segments. CharlieDenson believes that this is an era in which consumers have power, and any company must turn to consumers as the center. This consumer-centered model has begun to play a role. For example, Nike's specialty stores now have a sales combination of Nike +iPod to meet the young consumers who are pursuing fashion.
To this end, Nike has strengthened four regional operation centers and established five new core product operation centers. The four regional operation centers are the United States, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and the five core product operation centers are running, football, basketball, men's training and women's health. This is a kind of matrix management, the goal is to concentrate the resources of enterprises on key areas and core products in order to seize the biggest market opportunities of enterprises. Different from the traditional matrix management, the key is to achieve cross-regional and cross-departmental cooperation. In fact, Nike has already had successful experience. It is by adopting this collaborative matrix management method that Nike formed a special team to expand the business volume of the company's football supplies market from $40 million in 1994 to $0.5 billion today. Charlie Denson said: In this way, we can better serve athletes, deepen contact with consumers, better expand our market share, achieve effective growth and enhance our global competitiveness. For example, the basketball market in China is jointly developed by the Asia-Pacific Operation Center and the Global Basketball Operation Center.
Mr. Zhang Ruimin once said that the question he wanted to ask Mr. Welch most was: How to make big companies smaller. Now, under the leadership of Mr. Zhang Ruimin himself, Haier is undergoing a large-scale organizational change, which is quite similar to Nike's change, and the core is the synergy matrix. Perhaps this just confirms an old saying: Great minds think alike.