Happy Birthday, Nike.

For 60 years, this brand has been responsible for bringing sport to everyone, every day, everywhere. It blurred the line between sportswear and contemporary fashion, creating cultural icons – including Air Jordans – in their own right.

Nike’s incredible campaigns, like Find Your Greatness and Failure have used powerful imagery, faces and voiceovers to show that anyone can be an athlete and an athlete can be anyone. Anyone who knows me will see swooshes on each side of my feet. I certainly bought into the '80s advertising.

But putting a finger on Nike’s sonic identity? I’m not sure I can. Where's that iconic Nike tick swoosh sound? The one that competes with Netflix's Ta-Dum or McDonald's I'm Lovin' It?

What if Nike had launched a sonic brand years ago, and stuck with it?

This isn't to detract from the brand’s power and influence when it comes to music. Nike scores ads with consistency and beauty which crosses cultures and time zones. But a sonic brand? Could that have helped them have an even stronger 'foothold' in culture? Could they have been even more famous?

So, on Nike’s 60th birthday, let's take a look back at six decades of sound, how it’s used it to emphasise its flexibility as a brand, its ability to tap into contemporary culture and its willingness to always, always invest in top-level craft. Because that’s what really sets Nike apart. 

Nike’s brand book 

To work with Nike is both creatively challenging and rewarding simply because their bar is set so high. You’re running on the heels of the truly iconic work that’s come before you.

The original Air Jordan commercials were so successful for two reasons: their ability to show Jordan the star, and their contemporary, cheeky earworm hip-hop soundtracks, forever linking basketball and hip-hop culture together.

Recently, Nike utilised the hype surrounding the final season of Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso to create their Believe campaign. Set to Billy Preston’s 1974 hit Nothing From Nothing, the ad expertly captures the optimism and outlook the show’s protagonist is known for, combining it with the Nike-sponsored Richmond FC kit to forever link the series, product and brand in the viewer's mind.

Our work on the epic Write The Future campaign for the European Cup Final in 2010 updated and remixed Dutch band Focus’ Hocus Pocus for a fist-pumping ad. Like the Lasso spot, the track isn’t necessarily recent, but the fit between image and sound, achieved through the mix and edit, gives the ad an urgency and drives the action through musical storytelling. It tapped into what was happening right now in football with a track that emphasised the emotions of the audience.

The challenge of these ads is that the brief is open, allowing for a variety of sounds across campaigns. But that’s also the brief’s beauty. Because if you were to look at the music paragraph in the Nike brand book, I believe it would say: Capture a cultural moment. Be urgent. Be powerful. Be now. 

Global ambition, local focus 

This flexibility of brand is what has allowed Nike to fit into different contexts, giving them the ability to connect authentically with different markets globally.

For example, look at Nike India’s Make Every Yard Count cricket ad. Featuring snapshots from 1440 cricketers, the ad is set to a thumping ‘Bhatkhande’ track, very specific to that part of the world. Its musical identity is rich in Indian cultural references, showing Nike isn’t just applicable to fans of American basketball.

We had a similar approach when we worked with Nike Korea on their Choose Phenomenal ad. The advert contrasts fantasy and reality to create an inspiring piece of work, aimed at empowering Korean women to engage with sports. We purposefully accelerated the track to increase the intensity, mimicking the heartbeat during a workout session. Over the top of this, we layered filtered guitar and strings to give a hopeful and incredibly personal tune. The aim was to make something simple yet powerful that would speak to women from a specific context, propelling them to act with confidence.

By being flexible with its sonic palette, Nike is able to create local campaigns that feel both truly Nike and truly attached to that specific culture and place. It means different regions can experiment with their own ‘sound of Nike’ leading more people to connect with the brand globally. 

Now, That’s What I Call Nike   

And what would Nike’s Greatest Hits sound like as an album? Well, it would certainly be diverse. It would hop between a variety of powerful genres and styles, voices and instruments from all over the world. But it would always, always maintain a consistently high quality of production with incredibly well-written, recorded, mixed and mastered music.

Yet I can’t help shaking the feeling that a sonic identity that had grown with the brand over the last 60 years would have been the most impactful in the world.

Regardless, bar a few unwelcome ballads here and there, a Nike track relates to, and often dictates, what’s happening right now in culture. Nike’s sound may not have translated quite yet into a sonic identity but we all know what they sound like. Even if we still, after 60 years, can’t quite put our finger on why.