The Gender of Branding: Early Nike Women's Advertising as a Feminist Antenarrative

Nike is one of the most visible brands in the world, with advertising that has drawn both acclaim and condemnation. Nike's partnership with its advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy (W+K) is legendary. Considering the visibility of the Nike brand, its close relationship with W+K and Nike's historically patriarchal positioning (Fog, Budtz, & Yakaboylu, 2005; Katz, 1994; Strasser & Becklund, 1993), Nike women's advertising provides an ideal case study for exploring how gender influences branding and the narrative process. If we consider gender within the narrative process (Clair, 1993; Clair, 2006; Mumby, 1987; Rhode, 2003), the lack of women in advertising agency creative departments (Broyles & Grow, 2008; Creamer, 2005; Farris, 2005; Mallia, 2006; Weisberg & Robbs, 1997), and Nike's masculine brand image (Fog et al., 2005; Katz, 1994; Strasser & Becklund, 1993), then the advertising that launched and sustained the women's sub-brand represents an exceptionally rich case study of gender, branding, and narrative process. The evolution of the women's brands is an intensely layered story, "a complicated network of economic, cultural, and psychic relations" (Cole & Hribar, 1995, p. 349). From a communicative perspective, the ads for the women's sub-brand function as antenarratives. From a branding perspective the ads function as living stories reflecting female experiences and providing its audience with "emotional promises" (Aaker, 1997; Gobe, 2001; Travis, 2000) of empowerment and community that offer a sense of "reality" (Mumby, 1987). Few studies use the creative process as a point of reference from which to explore the impact of gender on advertising. Fewer still explore advertising from the point of view of the creative team, much less a female creative team. This study does exactly that. For nearly eight years, from 1990-1997, the almost exclusively female creative team from W+K created ads for the Nike women's sub-brand that often challenged the social constructions of gender and sports. In the early 1990s, a female point of view was rarely reflected in advertising. While the creative team and Nike executives had the same objective of increasing market share among women, each had strongly differing views about how to achieve this. In the end, women's advertising ultimately increased Nike's market share among women (Cole & Hribar, 1995; Lucus, 2000). Yet, the ads were a continual source of tension between the creative team and Nike executives. This case study represents the merging of theoretical perspectives on branding, narrative process, and gender. It is framed by two overarching research questions. First, how did gender influence the communication between the creative team and the Nike executives? Second, how did their communication influence the creative process that shaped the branded messages within early Nike women's advertising, if at all? To that end, this study explores the development of the Nike women's sub-brand as a narrative process. Ultimately, early Nike women's advertising came to exemplify the intersection where "social and sport ideals clash" (Krane, Choi, Baird, Aimar & Kauer, 2004, p. 318). As such, women's advertising became a lightening rod for intense debates over gender representations within the Nike women's sub-brand (Blair, 1994; Cole & Hribar, 1995; Goldman & Papson, 1998; Grow & Wolburg, 2006; Lucas, 2000; Scott, 1993). At its heart, this is the story of how gender, sports, and power collide at the intersection of the Nike brand. The Gender of Branding in the Literature Nike's Prominence in Advertising Both Nike and its advertising agency, W + K, are highly esteemed in the world of professional branding, as exemplified by the awards each received from Advertising Age, one of the industry's most prestigious trade publications. In 1990 when the women's sub-brand was launched, Nike was a brand positioned as the patriarch of all sports, with the "Just do it" tagline defining that identity (Fog et al. …