Watch the video above or read below.

Matthew Burns:
Okay, so we’re back with my buddy Dylan, producer of the Sticky Sales Stories channel. Dylan is on fire. He’s bringing me these things. He brought me another really cool video that both him and I powerfully love. So this is an ad by Nike. I’ve talked about how we were going to be doing this one, so anybody who’s stuck around in this back watching, we’re so happy we could do it. We love this video. We’re going to play it first because we really want to hop into it right away. So let’s just play the video.

 

Narrator: Am I a bad person? Tell me, am I? I’m single-minded, I’m deceptive, I’m obsessive, I’m selfish. Does that make me a bad person? Am I a bad person? Am I? I have no empathy. I don’t respect you. I’m never satisfied. I have an obsession with power. I am irrational. I have zero remorse. I have no sense of compassion. I’m delusional. I’m maniacal. You think I’m a bad person? Tell me, tell me, tell me, help me. Am I? I think I’m better than everyone else. I want to take what’s yours and never give it back. What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine. Am I a bad person? Tell me, am I? Does that make me a bad person? Tell me, does it?

Matthew Burns:
Am I a bad person? Winning Isn’t For Everyone was a campaign that ran back in 2023, 2024. Anyway, it’s not that far away. It was done during the Summer Olympics, I believe it was.

The last Summer Olympics, and so here’s what I know. God damn, it makes you think, and I immediately attune to it. I’m going to be full disclosure here. I love high level performance. I coach high level performance baseball here in Nova Scotia. I’ve got kids who are now playing on the provincial team. I’ve got kids that are starting to get looked at for college. These are high level performing individuals. My oldest son Jeffrey, played for the Ontario Blue Jays and he got picked up by a college right when 2020 hit, they shut baseball down at the college level. We are a high performance family. And so this speaks volumes. I actually spend a good portion of my time when I first start developing a child who goes from playing recreational baseball into high performance baseball, talking to them about the mental state on the field versus the mental state off the field.

On the field. I am the best thing that ever happened. You have to believe that otherwise doubt will creep in and you’ll then lose. If you never doubt and you realize that everybody’s out there doing the same thing, then your mental state is, I’m not a bad person. I’m trying to win. And this ad did it brilliantly. In that handoff, what’s his name was up about to do the slam dunk. LeBron, that’s it. LeBron was up there. He was about to do the slam dunk, and then it converted into the winning moments from the “I hate you” moments or “I don’t respect you” moments, which that’s probably my least favorite line in the whole thing. But this whole idea that what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine. I love that stuff. So all of those things are powerfully true for a high performing athlete. And it was well produced. I mean, why am I talking about production? It rocked. I mean, it’s a Nike staple. They do really high quality things, but tell me why the production is so good.

Dylan Bernier:
Well, we can start with the fact that Willem Dafoe voiced the whole thing.

Matthew Burns:
He’s a badass man. So good.

Dylan Bernier:
It was like listening to the Green Goblin tell you how to dominate in high performance sports.

Matthew Burns:
Heck yes. It was awesome. I love Willem Dafoe.

Dylan Bernier:
I think what I liked about the voiceover the most is that he really feels like the voice in the back of your head.

Matthew Burns:
Oh yeah.

Dylan Bernier:
If you’re on the court or on the field, wherever you’re at, it’s like that’s the voice in the back of your head. Again, I agree with you. There’s a few lines in there that maybe are a little too far, but…

Matthew Burns:
Okay, yeah, so well-written a well casted, so they got the right human being in there to do the work, but then the angles, the shots. Talk to me, man. This thing was so good.

Dylan Bernier:
Yeah, so can we start with the fact that it opens with, am I a bad person with a super tight shot of a little girl looking, the meanest fiercest she’s ever looked, ever?

Matthew Burns:
Right? Yes. She was determined to do something there. We don’t know what, but we know she was determined.

Dylan Bernier:
I love how this ad builds tension, and it started right from the beginning and it used camera techniques to achieve that with staying super tight and not giving away too much in the beginning. Pretty much every shot of each athlete was a tight on their face. The girl that was running, LeBron in the beginning, the fencing girl, the guy with no legs. You didn’t find that out until the very end.

Matthew Burns:
I didn’t notice it the first time I watched it. This time when I watched, it was like, wait a second, that’s the guy from the end. Brilliantly done. A hundred percent. You knew that guy was dominant. You didn’t realize how powerful he actually was. Oh my God.

Dylan Bernier:
And the way that they stay tight all the way until the dunk, that’s when it’s finally reaches it’s climax. Then every shot after that is just wide or full body shots of the athletes doing their stuff at the highest level possible.

Matthew Burns:
And succeeding. I am going back to the messaging. I live in messaging world, you live in production world. The messaging was brilliant, and the way that they tied it in with production too. It’s about me. It’s about me, it’s about me. It’s how I feel. This is why I do the thing I do. So that tight shot with these words about being connected to success, which shows that this is why I try so hard, this is why I pursue this so much. And then you have wins. You have a slam dunk, you have a goal scored, you have a tennis strike. All of these things where it’s like, I am doing it so I can be the best. And it’s about the individual inside their brain to how that translates into their sport in the real world. And so you’re absolutely right. The way that they did that was wicked.

Dylan Bernier:
Yeah, I mean, another thing that Nike is always so good at is celebrity attachment. They do it in a way that feels natural. The athletes that they choose feel like they belong in that piece for a reason. It’s not like it feels like they’re being forced in there. And I think that’s a big thing when it comes to casting celebrities or even celebrity athletes in commercials. It’s like seeing a Toronto Raptor in a Subway commercial. It just feels kind of weird.

Matthew Burns:
Little forced. Yeah.

Dylan Bernier:
Yeah, a little forced. Seeing them in a Nike commercial, you could make the argument that, oh, they’re just Nike athletes. They belong in a Nike commercial regardless. But I disagree. I think that the way that they use these celebrities in these ads is very, very intentional and very well done.

Matthew Burns:
Listen, Nike’s a brand that is always used their athletes in coordination with their products. I mean, Michael Jordan was the first one they brought in, and they’ve never changed on that as far as that’s the way they communicate to high performance athletes that this is the brand that can get you there. What they did here was they said, here’s LeBron James and here’s a young girl trying to do the same thing. Here’s X and then the amateur athlete, and they brought that in. And like you said, they did that very intentionally. I thought that was brilliant. And again, it’s why it resonates with me. It’s why it resonates with people who are trying to be best at their game, but aren’t there yet. But I think there’s a huge flaw in this, and actually I did some research to kind of prove my flaw was who’s Nike’s target audience?

Dylan Bernier:
You and Stephen have talked about it in previous episode. It’s the Weekend Warrior.

Matthew Burns:
It’s the Weekend Warrior. It’s the guy who’s not trying to win. It’s the guy who has a passion for doing the thing. Or the young lady who has a passion for doing the thing. This is the campaign that broke them actually. And when I say broke them, they’re not struggling for cash. But what happened is that they traded market share with Adidas. Adidas ran a campaign around the same time where they leaned heavily into the amateur athlete only. They didn’t go towards the professional athlete, they didn’t talk about, they resonated with, “I could do that.” Anybody can do that thing. So just me, the weekend warrior could do that.

And so Nike lost, and I think it was 2 billion in sales over the course of the next six months after that, this campaign started, and I think it was a 2% market share dip, 2% market share dip in six months is a stupid number. It’s a dumb number, especially with a market leader like Nike. Now, Adidas isn’t a slump by any means, but this is the problem. You and I both agree. This is a fantastic ad as far as production and message. The problem is it failed the strategy that Nike has set up over the last 20 years. Failed it completely. Listen, we just did a Better Help episode, you and I. And in the Better Help, we talked about it, it was three cut or three shots, two cuts, simple production, easy to do.

Dylan Bernier:
Super simple.

Matthew Burns:
Super simple, and the story, the message, the strategy was on point. So it hit really hard, it punched way above its belt. This one, huge production, all the celebrity endorsement. Willem Dafoe isn’t a $5 actor, great cinematography. So you know that they spent some money on the people that were behind the scenes putting this thing together. The editing – brilliant, crazy good.

Dylan Bernier:
The writing as well is also really good.

Matthew Burns:
Right? Top notch.

Dylan Bernier:
The copywriters are not the strategists, right?

Matthew Burns:
Exactly.

Dylan Bernier:
They were given their brief and they did a fantastic job off what they were given.

Matthew Burns:
You got it. Listen, I’m a writer on a lot of the accounts. I’m a strategist on some. I’m the writer on a lot of the accounts, and Stephen Semple’s a strategist on most. He’s not a writer. And if Stephen says, Hey, Matthew, this is the strategy we’re going to work with. Can you please now write to this emotion, write to this thing. That’s my job. I write to the thing that I’ve given to by the strategist. And so when the strategy gets screwed up, what happens is you spend a billion dollars on a production and you lose 2 billion in revenue because you didn’t talk to your core audience. And I think that’s a lesson here. Please, please, business owners, please remember the strategy, who you are and who is your core audience. Who’s spending money on your products, who’s driving in towards your brand, who believes the same things you do, don’t alienate them.

Now that being said, I have just decided in this video, I have three more sessions with my high performance kids before they hit the field. I’m actually going to play this video for them. I’m going to say, guys, this is how you feel when you’re on the court, when you’re on the field, because it’s brilliant for that. But that’s because that message hits this target audience. But this target audience is so much smaller than the Weekend Warrior. So that’s how you lose. Hey, listen, you might’ve gotten a whole bunch of high performing athletes to pick up your brand, but you screwed it up. You screwed it up because the high performance market is this big and the Weekend Warrior market is this big, and that’s why you lost money. And then they came back with, we just did the stairs, Nike ad with the marathon runners, all really, really sore the next day, which got right back into the people who do it. They want to do it because they love doing it, their passion to do it. And that’s now where we’re at. What’s your last thoughts?

Dylan Bernier:
I want to ask you specifically why the messaging doesn’t speak to the Weekend Warrior. So we know why it speaks to the high performance athlete of all ages, but why doesn’t this resonate with or with the Weekend Warrior?

Matthew Burns:
The weekend warrior is not trying to win. The Weekend Warrior is just happy to be part of the game – that they’re still doing it, they’re still active. Honestly, the Weekend Warrior isn’t going out saying, I can be the best I can be. The weekend Warrior’s going out like, man, I just love running. Actually, a great example of this is we had a client, a podiatrist that we did their ad campaigns called Walkie Feet up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And he had one client who wrote a testimonial for the help that she got from him because all she wanted to do was be able to get back to running. Not winning, just not stopping. And not stopping is different than dominating. It’s a completely different audience member. So this one where it was, you’re going to do absolutely everything you can to be able to get the slam dunk, get the score, the goal, get your points in tennis, whatever that sport is, you’re doing everything you possibly can to get the end result.

And there is no end result because running for fun is an infinite game, not a finite game. And the finite game is at the end of this, I’m going to be the victor, you’re going to be the loser. People who are Weekend Warriors aren’t trying to do that. Softball players that real heavy duty, hardcore, even though it’s hardcore, they’re going out to win. They just really want to play another game of softball. That’s what they’re for. And so no, I think it’s completely two different audiences. The Weekend Warrior is somebody who just wants to continue and never stop. And the person who is the ultimate athlete, they’re there to crush and dominate and be the absolute number one in their field. Two different messages.

Dylan Bernier:
Yeah, I agree. I still think the Weekend Warrior enjoys winning, but that’s not their primary focus, right?

Matthew Burns:
There you go. A hundred percent.

Dylan Bernier:
And so because the ad was 100% focused on winning and anything that goes into winning it missed the fact that the Weekend Warrior just loves it for the love of the game and for the health benefits of doing it too.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. They don’t ever want to stop. They don’t want to get to the end as the victor. And that’s the difference to me. Great question, man. I love being challenged. Stephen does it all the time. So why should you be any different? Listen, thanks everybody. We’re really happy that Nike’s kind of switched their focus back. We hate to be rude to them at all. I mean, as far as their marketing goes, I mean, whether you like them as a company, whether you like where they make their shoe, all their stuff, we don’t care. But their marketing has always really been  on brand, been very powerful, right from that first old man running across the bridge commercial way back when, this is a powerfully strong marketing company and we are so happy they’re back.

Dylan Bernier:
Yeah, fantastic ad for the wrong audience.

Matthew Burns:
For the wrong audience. That’s exactly it. That was a great last words. Well, I’m not putting more on there. Thanks everybody. We’re going to see you guys next time.

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