Nike: Using subculture to redefine the mainstream

Nike is great at using controversy to spark conversation about its brand. It is also highly effective in using less obvious approaches. What Nike really gets right is that it shows a subculture in a way that holds a mirror up for mainstream culture to see something of themselves.

Nike did this back in 1998 when trying to establish credibility in the skateboarding world.

The parody of athletes - whether runners or tennis players - being treated like skateboarders not only signaled to skateboarders the brand understood their world but pulled mainstream sports into the space through something they could relate to even if they hadn't personally experienced. A bond between subculture and the mainstream sounds counterintuitive but like business economics, progress with social change requires exactly this dynamic: what is in the margins pulling towards the center.

Dove did something similar in 2004. A central idea powering the Campaign for Real Beauty was that beauty belongs to each woman, and she’s better off defining it for herself on her terms. This idea stretched the relevance of the campaign beyond women who fell outside the narrow definition of beauty and also appealed to women whose bodies were closer to prevailing stereotypes. It gave women of all kinds the ability to rally behind the campaign whatever their personal definition of beauty because it was an idea they could participate in,

The recent support Nike has given to Rollerskating reprises the brand’s strategy in 1998.

It too is a subculture like it’s four wheel cousin but this effort cleverly taps into our cultural climate, one marked by an accelerated challenge to social norms. The demographics of families has been evolving for some time with the rise of blended families (with kids from prior relationships) and multi race unions, but the RollerSkating project echoes the wider agency people are embracing across society to define different elements in their life for themselves, such as gender, sexual orientation, women's rights and racial equality. The emerging definition of family is for it to be what we define. Not bound by biological ties. Even free of children. It’s a richer identity, and it fuels more than narrow, significance in the margins: an idea that opens up the definition of family enriches the bond for all families under the sun, even those that are closer to the mainstream stereotypes.

The Rollerskating women refer to themselves as a community which most sports are. But it is their identity as a family - one they acknowledge - that makes this film a poignant commentary on a cultural issue transitioning towards a new normal.