In March, Nike CEO Mark Power said: “We’re aligning all of our firepower against the consumer experience.”
Like Nike, Parker leads by example and gets results.
The latest innovative approach from Nike is its Consumer Direct Offense, which Parker talked about during the company’s recent first-quarter earnings call.
“We’ve aligned into a new formation that Consumer Direct Offense, just focused on reinventing our business and the industry,” he explained. “And while changing your approach is never easy, NIKE has proven before that when we do, it’s always ignited the next phase of growth for our company. We’ve had to make some tough choices with our teams. We’ve tested and learned and we got better.”
With the new Consumer Direct Offense, Nike is taking that consumer connection one step further.
“We’re going deeper,” Parker said. “We’re connecting more personally to help each individual make the right choice for them. That’s incredibly powerful for a brand that motivates people to do more.”
What’s more, Nike is “breaking old models and we’re fully realigning our teams to be more personal by adding resources to our fastest-growing cities, editing our lines to create more choice on top-selling products, investing in better data and analytics to sense market shifts faster, activating new product creation teams focused only on speed to market, and we’re leading with mobile,” Parker noted.
While the foundation for Nike success will always be inspiring an innovative product, Parker said, “it’s the source of creative storytelling, it’s how we drive distinction in the marketplace and it’s a competitive advantage under any market conditions. We’ve talked a lot about accelerating both the cadence and impact of innovation. We know that creating innovation with impact requires more than the launch of a single style.
Impact really comes from scale. Air Max is a great example of that this quarter, where energy and performance are being led by VaporMax and where we’ve increased access to high-demand classics like Air Max 97. Stay tuned, we have exciting new Air Max platforms on the way soon.”
During the first quarter, nothing was bigger than Nike and the NBA, Parker noted.
“We not only unveiled new on-court innovation, we also introduced NIKE Connect, our first step into an era of digitally-connected products,” he added. “We see great potential ahead to link future product with services and experiences in seamless ways.”
Evan Magliocca, brand marketing manager for Baseman Insights & Marketing, told Loyalty360 that Nike’s issues aren’t product-related.
“Nike has amazing products and a large, loyal customer base,” Magliocca explained. “Nike’s challenges are macro—declining margins, competing with Amazon, and the roll-out to DTC. The good news is everything starts with great products and Nike has that. They’re set up well for future success and they have some room to maneuver that very few retailers have lately.”