Last week, Nike celebrated the 25th anniversary of its ingenious "Just Do It" advertising campaign with a 90-second commercial voiced by Bradley Cooper, inviting viewers to step into the arena with sports stars ranging from LeBron James to Serena Williams.
We looked at the past two-and-a-half decades of the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy's work to find the Nike ads that shaped the brand's history.
The Very First 'Just Do It' Ad (1988)
The first time the world heard "Just Do It" was in this television commercial featuring Walt Stack, a then-80-year-old running icon. In the ad, a shirtless Stack lumbers across the Golden Gate Bridge while telling the audience he runs 17 miles every morning.
"Just Do It" came to Nike at a pivotal time: the company was trying to reverse a mid-decade decline in which it lost its position as the United States' top-selling shoe brand. Needless to say, "Just Do It" was a step in the right direction.
Michael Jordan Teams Up With Spike Lee's Mars Blackmon (1988)
In 1988, Nike launched the first of a series of commercials starring Michael Jordan and Spike Lee, neither of whom had yet reached superstar status in their respective fields.
Mars Blackmon, Lee's over-caffeinated fanboy character, elicited laughs with his complete lack of self-awareness, and Jordan's comparative cool helped him win over a generation of basketball fans.
The iconic, black-and-white ads cemented the Air Jordan shoe's place in the national consciousness as both a fashion statement and a collectors' item. "Money, it's gotta be the shoes!"
Bo Knows (1989)
For a one-of-a-kind athlete, Wieden + Kennedy needed a one-of-a-kind ad campaign.
Wieden + Kennedy highlighted Bo Jackson's versatility as both a professional football and baseball player in a series of ads based on the premise that Jackson's skills extended well beyond his two sports of choice.
The "Bo Knows" series yielded one of the most memorable commercials of all time, which used special effects to treat viewers to a room full of Bo Jacksons clad in various ridiculous sporting outfits. More importantly for Nike, the ads dramatically improved the company's cross-trainer sales, helping it regain its position as America's biggest athletic shoe company.
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