Gerrard Kaonga
The origin of Nike’s iconic slogan has quite the macabre origin story.
Marketing for companies is pretty essential, in fact, the simplest things like names, colors or fonts can make a person think of a company or its products - but what is a company without a catchy slogan?
If you think of any huge corporation, there's a catchy line to go with it - think of McDonald's 'I'm lovin it' or L'Oreal's 'Because you're worth it'.
And Nike just happened to strike gold way back in 1988 when the ‘Just do it’ slogan was used for the first time. The slogan was debuted in a TV commercial about an 80-year-old runner named Walt Stack and the rest is history.
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After all, the phrase worked pretty well for Shia LaBeouf back in 2015, too. But where did it even come from?
‘Just Do It’ was dreamed up by Dan Wieden who was the head of ad-agency Wieden & Kennedy at the time. And according to Wieden, the slogan was more or less inspired by the final words of murderer Gary Gilmore.
In 1976, Gilmore robbed and killed a gas station attendant then a motel worker in Utah and was sentenced to death.
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When he was set to be executed via firing squad in 1977, he was asked if he had any last words and reportedly said: ‘Let’s do it’.
According to a Business Insider report, Wieden, who spoke to Doug Pray in his 2009 documentary Art & Copy said: “I like the ‘do it’ part of it.”
Recalling him and the team working on the ad, he said: “None of us really paid that much attention. We thought 'Yeah. That'd work'."
Speaking in a separate interview to Dezeen, Wieden explained the intention behind the phrase.
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He said: "I was trying to write something that would tie it up, so it could speak to women who had just started walking to get in shape, to people who were world-class athletes — and it had the same kind of connection with them."
According to NPR, Wieden also told Design Indaba that he'd dropped the 'let's' part 'otherwise I'd have to give him credit'.
The advert was a huge success for Nike, with EPSN feature writer, Nick DePaula, adding: "Not only was the slogan great, and also approachable and vague enough that anybody could apply it to whatever it was they were trying to aspire to do."
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This grim story was a little more than people expected and social media users have commented their shock and surprise at the backstory.
One user on Twitter commented: “yikes didn't see that coming,” while another added: “Ok well that's ruined that.. Bit morbid.”
A third commented that it was 'disturbing'.
UNILAD has contacted Nike for comment.