What I Learned About Marketing Working At Nike

Market like a billion-dollar business. That is what we're going to talk about today on Cashing on Camera. We've got the perfect person to talk about billion-dollar marketing because Parker Nash worked for a company called Nike. You may have heard of it for 11 years, and he was part, uh, partly responsible for helping top-line revenue, uh, increase by like a half a billion dollars, right? So we're talking about big time, big time marketing here, but we're going to bring it down to a level that you can apply it to what you're doing. So, Parker, so great to have you here. Let's dig in a little bit on your experience. Obviously, that's the lens through which we're seeing this today is your experience at Nike. Tell us a little bit about what you were responsible for and what kind of teams that you were involved in when you worked there.

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, yeah, a little background. I spent, like you said, a little bit over 11 years working at Nike and I got to do several different things, working different roles. And a lot of the places where I spent was time in product. And having that opportunity to be at a place like Nike for 11 years was kind of an amazing opportunity to be working with and getting a front row seat to see how companies like Nike and people within the brand really learn how to and market, brand, create product that turns not just customers into customers, but to diehard fans. I mean, within the industry, especially at Nike, there's a term for the people that are the raving fans of Nike product. They actually call them sneakerheads because they're obsessed with the product that they create, right? And so going through that process, being at that level for 11 years and seeing you know, how designers work or branders, all these different people, and how do you really do this stuff. It was just so incredible to be a part of that and just seeing the process which they go through. And I think that's one of the kind of the biggest learnings I had was, you know, from the outside you may go, well gosh, brands like Nike or any billion-dollar brand, Apple, Amazon, Google, you know, the things they're doing, like as a small business or an entrepreneur, I can't do that because I don't have a billion dollars. To, to throw at my marketing and sales channels or whatever. But that's what I started to realize working there at Nike. I was like, man, a lot of the things that they're doing are actually timeless principles of how do you go about building a concrete step-by-step marketing plan and system. And that's where I started to realize, boy, there's, there's a lot of good businesses and people out there that are— have great products and services but they're missing some of these key principles. And because of that, it's holding them back. It's why they're being ignored. It's why they're a little bit lost in the sea of noise of so many different businesses.

I can imagine that working at Nike and as you just said, you know, seeing all the different departments, you know, design and all the different, you know, people doing what they do best, that that must have been such an education to be able to be a fly on the wall really a fly on the wall of all of the things that are going on there. And what a rich experience that might, that should, that would have been. I'd love to dig in. And you're absolutely right. I think that these timeless principles, doesn't matter if you're Nike, you know, with a revenue of over $30 billion, you know, or if you're a six-figure entrepreneur, you're a seven-figure entrepreneur, what remains the same is that there are these timeless principles that everyone can apply. So why don't we dive into some of the things you learned working at Nike that you saw as timeless principles, and we'll dive into that conversation and help our viewership and listenership out today.

Yeah, let's do that. So I think first and foremost, I mean, this is essentially seared into my mind. It's kind of like, I can't do this. I can't do anything without doing this first, which is we had a saying at Nike and it was something along the lines of everything begins and ends with the consumer. And so really what is— what that means is obsessing your customers and consumers. And I feel like a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs miss this point because, um, and they just— they have a product or service that many people can use and many types of people or businesses can use. And because of that they fail to get really concrete and specific on, well, no, who is actually the people that we can most benefit and really attract? And it kind of goes to a little saying of— I don't know if you're saying or not before, but the friend to everyone is a friend to no one. And I think a lot of small businesses get into that problem of they haven't put a stake in the ground saying these are the people or types of businesses that we can help, and Because of that, a lot of their messaging and marketing is, is frankly, it's confusing. And because it's not clear of who do you help, how do you help, how do you help me? And listen, when people come across our brands, if you can't clearly— if they can't clearly understand what you do, how you help, and who you help within 3 to 5 seconds, they're not going to be there to spend 30 minutes to really try to learn your business, right? We want answers really, really fast. So figuring out who your ideal customers are and clearly communicating that really fast is something that is so important to do for our businesses and really foundational element for any of the branding and marketing that we do going forward.

I mean, there's so much that you've just said that is gold. And one, one aspect of that is the idea of if you're marketing to everyone, no one, you're not connecting really with anyone and getting that specificity and really figuring that out. I think the challenge that often smaller businesses face with that is that it's a process. That it does happen in some cases over time. Like that you do have to, and hopefully, we can reduce that amount of time that it takes. But I still think, and I'd love to know your opinion about this, does it take time? Like, is it 100% strategy? Like, can you figure it out in an afternoon? Or is it the kind of thing, because I'm thinking with Nike, they probably had teams, marketing teams whose job it was to really dive into this. And it would have been a process over time, right?

Absolutely. And it is, it is not something that you just immediately go out the gates. And this is with all branding, marketing, business, product creation. Nothing you come out with is ever perfect, right? And I think this is where a lot of people get hung up, is they're looking for perfection rather than progress. We want progress over perfection. And I think for a lot of businesses, this is a general direction, is you start and be kind of going, hey, I can help out a lot of different people. But then you start— this is why I think there's a really important exercise for us to do is, again, we did this at Nike, and I know other big brands do this all the time, is each quarter spending some time going, okay, who is the customer that we want to work with? Who is the customer we want to attract? And it's a quarterly thing of how do you refresh and reframe who you're working with. And there's a couple questions we can ask ourselves in our own businesses to help uncover that and really help, um, pick out who is that, the, that, those ideal customers for us to, to go for. And I think a couple of them first are identifying who your greatest fans are. Assuming you've been in business, you have been in business and been in business for a bit, maybe you have some customers or clients. Who are your biggest fans? Another way to ask that question is who gives you the best reviews or testimonials, right? Like, who's— or also, who's, who's referring you um, the most to other customers? See if you can start to, by answering those questions, group those people into, oh, here's a general type of customer that fits that profile, that's doing those activities. So that's one way to do that. Another way to do that is, who do you actually like to work with the most? Who's important, right? Yeah, like, if you could pick one customer or client to have over and over and replicate that 100 times, Who would that be? Can you pick that person? If doing that, then, then you can actually start to put some guardrails around this and create like what we call like a customer avatar profile of, oh, there's other people like them out there. Now I know where to go and find them, to reach them, to, to, to build a relationship with them. And then a final question you could just ask is just do a quick analysis of where you— where's your business coming from? Is it coming by certain industries or sectors, or are there different types of, um, services that you have where you see specific customers be gravitating towards? Answer those 3 different types of fans, who you want to work with, and then where your business is coming from, and then you can actually start to pull out, oh, there's 1, 2, maybe 3 main customers that we can really build our entire business around.

Yeah, and one of our Facebook users just said, who are your cheerleaders? I think that is a great way of looking at it, right? It's just looking at— and this is an exercise that I did for myself at one point. It was— I did it years years ago with a coach, and then I did it more so on my own at one point too, is just to look back and look at the patterns. You know, success leaves clues. I mean, you know, if you look back and you go, gee, you know, who were— where did I get my clientele from? Who are they? I think those are all, uh, great questions to ask. So obsessing over your customer and obsessing over your client and understanding them intimately would be a big thing. I love what you said about reviewing that quarterly. I think that makes a lot of sense, um, to give it a timeline and just like literally put that in your calendar. It's a day of reflection.

It's, it's so important to do because what we want to avoid— actually, this is what my business coach has coined— is, is the customer drift. And I'm like, that— my guy, coach is Steve Daly. I'm like, Steve, that's spot on. Which is, there's— if you don't do this quarterly, you can drift away from who your ideal customers, who you want to work with. And also, you can also become a victim of your success a little bit here, which is because you do a good job for customers or clients, they may ask you to do other things. So you could drift away from your core products or services that, yeah, I can do that. But it also— that's where it can— you can eventually lead to this, into this spot where you're going, boy, I built a business that may be successful, but I'm working with people I don't really love to work with. And I'm doing stuff that I actually don't really like to do. How did I get here, right? And so that's why that exercise of evaluating ideal customers quarterly is important for your own business, but it's also essential and critical for the marketing that you end up creating. Because we want to make sure that all of our marketing, it's done on a, on a, you know, at scale, but it feels personal. That when that person comes across your website, your social media, they're going How did you know I was thinking that? Like, that's why Nikes and Apples are so incredible, because they get inside the minds of their consumers, but they happen to reach millions of people's— people at the same time doing that. I mean, this is a, a great example that comes back way back when, when Apple really started to kind of revitalize themselves was, if you remember this campaign, it was called— they came down to two words, which was Think Different. And that was all because they knew our customers are creatives and we want to help them be more creative. And that's how they position their products and that's how they got into the minds. They knew who would actually gravitate towards this product.

Wasn't that one of— and we're talking about Nike here, we're talking about Apple now too. Yeah, but wasn't that one of the first campaigns? Wasn't that one of the first campaigns that Apple came out with that was really the revolutionary one?

It was because before that they were, they were really struggling because they were doing what a lot of our, uh, this is going— I call messaging mistakes is where, again, this is another thing a lot of businesses get wrong is how do you talk and talk about your business the right way and market yourself the right way. It was— they had led originally with features and functions, right? Our computer has this feature, this feature, and like, here's the thing Nobody— this is, this is what this comes down to, is the curse of knowledge. Is we know so much about our products or services that we forget that our customers don't know what we know. So when we're talking about features, our customers don't care about features. They don't care about the, the memory you have in your computer or the type of foam you have in your, your Nike shoe or whatever. They care about the outcome it produces. And so that's what they realized was, boy, we're talking features, we're talking all this tech and information. They're basically just overwhelming their customers with information that they really didn't care about. What they cared about actually was the outcomes their computers could produce. And that's how it shifted. And so for our— for, for your audience and our own businesses, this is what we need to think about, is not about the features of our products and services, but the outcomes we produce And we need to be able to paint a picture of what that looks like for our customers.

Things like identity, things like status. Again, you're the brand strategist, but I'm just thinking as someone who— like, I'm just thinking more about the emotional side of it as getting away from features, but really kind of going more toward what kind of transformation are you actually providing to your person?

Exactly.

What kind of status is it that they want in society or amongst their peers, or what kind of identity is it that they want for themselves and how they feel about themselves internally? It's so, it's so interesting, right? I think the whole piece around marketing and how you can apply billion-dollar marketing strategies and some of these timeless principles to your small business, it does start with, as you said, obsessing over your client, obsessing over your customer, understanding them intimately. But what are some other things that you've learned at Nike that would be a timeless principle that are, you know, something that really could be tangible for someone who's building a small to medium-sized business?

Yeah, I would say, I mean, kind of along with what you're just saying there is that whole thing of identity and identity transformation. And this kind of all goes into— I think this is where all of us really need to to dial this in is what is the message? What are the words we use to communicate how we talk about our business and brand? I mean, this is why Apple's able to get to Think Different. That's why Nike gets down to Just Do It, right? And they're able to create these campaigns is because they have a framework of this is how we talk about our business. So a couple things that your audience can really look at is there's a couple things we want to talk about. Um, as it relates to our business, and that this is going to go through all of our marketing. And if you aren't talking about these things, this is why maybe you're being ignored, or it feels like it's just a struggle to get people to pay attention to you. So one of the messaging principles that we really want to hit on first is clearly identifying the one big thing our customers want from our product or service as it relates to our product or service. Not the 3 things, not the 5 things But what is it that they want from us, right? We're gonna be remembered for one thing, so we gotta make sure we nail that. And I was actually helping a man out recently with this, and when, when he came to me, he, he was really kind of getting lost in terms of what exactly he did, how we helped. And, and that's where you came across his website. I was like, boy, I'm kind of confused. And I knew him, and I'm like, I'm kind of confused what exactly he's doing now. And so what he does now is he's a video coach for real estate agents. So we helped him get really clear on what's his service and who it's for. And what we— by going through that process, we realized what's the one big thing his real estate agent clients want. Well, they want to attract more leads, listings, and close more deals. So that was the one big thing we figured out, and that was the starting point to, all right, that's what his customers want, we're gonna— that's what we're gonna use within our value prop messages, our one-liners, our website. We're going to hit on that over and over and over again so that we get remembered for being able to do that for, for real estate clients. So that's the one thing, is first identify what is it your customers want. The second thing we need to do to create really effective messaging, which is the lifeblood of your marketing, is what are the problems. Identifying what the problem is your customers have. So we know what they want, but why can't they get that? What's holding them back from getting what they want? Because if, if there's— if we aren't solving a problem, and if we aren't talking about the problem that our customers have, then there's no reason for them to pay attention to us, right? And this is kind of now getting into a, uh, the psychology of, of our brains.

Oh, it's all psychology. I mean, so much of this is psychology, right? Because Yeah, I think you're, you know, you're right about how if you can truly understand what the problem is now, there's like, there's, there's a reason for them to pay attention because without that, there aren't any stakes. There's nothing exactly that can be lost here. Right. Is that where you're going with this?

It's exactly where I'm going with that. And that's— and this is the principle of loss aversion. We're more likely to go for something that helps us reduce a pain or a problem than it is to gain something, right? And this is kind of just our wiring, which is we are constantly on the lookout for things that may harm us. And probably, uh, evolution from us being on the, the, you know, the safari or Serengeti where we're looking out for animals that could, that could eat us, right? Fortunately, we don't live like that anymore. And so now that changes a little bit to, boy, how could this hurt my income? How could this hurt my status? Or, you know, the things that we value. Right? So that's where we need to be talking about the problems, because when you talk about the problems that your customers have, that's what actually gets them to go, oh, dealing with that, tell me more. And so if you can talk about the problem, you're going to get their attention. But if you can then take that one step further and get to the pain that that problem causes, now you're going to get them to feel this, and that's where they really start to sink in. It's like kind of like that gut punch of Hey, what's the problem? Why can't they get what they want? And how does that make them feel? If you can talk about those two things, now you actually get people's attention, and that enables you then to talk about your business, talk about your product, talk about what you can do for them, because you actually finally have their attention.

So Parker, I want to ask you then, when your experience in working with Nike all those years, is Nike really doing this stuff? Is Nike really using these timeless principles? I think I know the answer, but I want to reiterate that this is billion-dollar marketing that we're talking about here. This is what I think those billion-dollar companies are doing. You're going to answer the question as to whether or not they did this or not. But I suspect that that's the whole premise of this. This is attainable. We can do this too.

100%. This is what they do every single day. And it's not just Nike. It's— I'm telling you, if you're a billion-dollar brand, you're doing these things, right? And you're obsessing your consumer, you're really obsessing the problems that they have. And that's a day-in-day-out thing. And I mean, it got to a point where it was almost kind of cliché, but you'd be in meetings and stuff and you'd eventually have that person that'd be like, yeah, but what does the consumer think? And you'd be like, oh gosh, you know, again, really? But it's actually a really important thing to, to, to be talking about because we're not making products that we like, that we want to make. We're making products that our customers like. So we need to know what they, what they're dealing with. And, you know, whether it's the products that they create or the marketing campaigns or the brand campaigns that they create, we need to be solving the problem that the Nike consumer has. Otherwise, what's the point? We're not— you're just, you just got another shoe, right? And then that's where it just gets to what's your price point. That's not what we're here for. We're here to solve the problems that they're dealing with.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Nike is not a commodity, right? This is a multibillion-dollar brand that makes you feel a certain way about yourself. We're big Nike fans in this household. And I'll tell you, it's all about Nike around here. And there's a reason. We have a 14-year-old son and he won't look at other shoes. It's Nike all the way. So you have done, you know, you and when you work there and that company have done a really great job at doing the things that we've talked about today and getting into the minds of the consumer. And I think today you've given us some really great ideas on how we can apply some billion-dollar marketing timeless principles to our own businesses. So thank you for that. Parker, I'd love to ask you, what is a tip, tool, tactic, or technique that you have found that's really working for you in terms of marketing yourself personally or marketing your business, um, at this point?

I mean, honestly, what we're doing right now is one of my favorite things to do. I think this is what's so great about this, is the day and age which we live now is, uh, whether it's podcasting or podcast guesting. I love to be guests on podcasts because, again, this is where, um, if we're taking, um, something from a billion-dollar brand is, you know, Nike doesn't have a person that's a, like, a personal brand, but for many people it feels like a personal brand to them. So doing these kind of opportunities of getting out there, being on podcasts, if that's what you like to do, is an amazing opportunity for one, to get people to know, like, and trust you, but also offers such great other opportunities in terms of the networking opportunities, who you get to meet. You just never know the opportunities and connections that come through these kinds of things. So really, I think podcast guesting is a tremendous activity for us to be doing because one, it gets customers to know more about us and to like us and feel like they know us without actually knowing us. But ideally, if you're doing it right, you're helping your customers with information, provide them value, going back to solving some of the problems that they're dealing with. And because of that, that creates reciprocity and likability with your brand.

You are speaking my language. That's exactly what we do around here. So thank you so much for saying those things because we live and breathe that every single day. I love it. I would love to share your podcast— sorry, rather your website on this podcast. So tell us where people can get in touch with you, Parker.

Yeah, you go to parkertnash.com. There's a T in that. parkertnash.com. And, uh, I also have a free resource for your listeners and your audience too. It's parkertnash.com/boost, and that is— it's my free resources, 3-part video series called the 3-Part Business Boost. And in it, I'm telling you, you're going to get the same principles. There it is, we're looking at it right now on screen. You're going to learn how to transform your marketing, attract more customers, and grow your business, and really develop some of these key marketing assets that a brand like Nike would be able to do. So that's parkertnash.com/boost.

Fantastic. Parker, this has been such a fun conversation. Thank you for joining us on Cashing On Camera today and sharing these timeless principles that you saw in action at Nike throughout your tenure of 11+ years there. And obviously the great work that you're doing now as a brand messaging and brand messaging and marketing strategist. Obviously everything you've learned there is really you know, pertaining to the work that you do today. So thank you so much for being on the show. We really appreciate it.

Appreciate you having me on.