 What's up everybody, once again, it's Fran, Sean, and I got a weird question. Does Nike hate hip-hop? Why would somebody wonder that? Well, it came from the fact that Nike turned down Kanye years ago and people still bring that up in conversation these days, especially because of just the whole Adidas thing and where that's going, their competition, not going to get into that. But what I will say is, the reason that Nike turned Kanye down is the reason that Nike is so damn good at marketing. What you talking about, brand man? Well first, let's think about Kanye. What does Kanye really stand for? What did Kanye really push and project as far as... Nike doesn't care about culture. They don't understand on, on, on, on, on, on, and that was kind of the perception that was painted a lot through those campaigns, right? Just this idea that Nike was this big corporation that was outdated and lacked the understanding of where culture was going and what was relevant. But the opposite is true. It was a lot less about what Nike didn't understand and a lot more about what Nike does understand. Now, this isn't the only reason, of course, there's always multiple facets of these things. But one huge reason is Nike's mission statement. Now, if you go to Nike's website, you can find their mission statement where it says, what is Nike's mission? There it'll say, our mission is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. And under that with an asterisk, it says, if you have a body, you're an athlete. So why is it so relevant when I'm saying it's a bigger reason that Nike really continued to focus in their direction as opposed to where Kanye wanted them to possibly overabess in their own mind state? Well, consider this. Culture, particularly in what Kanye talks about, he influences, is pretty small. Not small in actuality. Obviously, Kanye has a big influence and it's one of the biggest in the world. It's worldwide influence, but it's still a particular culture and in the same way that you have people that really, really love Kanye, there's that other side of people who dislike Kanye for the type of culture that he's involved in. Nike, on the other hand, is faceless and it represents a culture that's actually bigger than the subset of culture that Kanye represents in pop music and that's sports, athletics. In the same way, somebody like Kanye's music divides different sides of politics or just other types of beliefs, artists and non-artists, all these things that Kanye speaks so heavily about. Nike is a faceless organization, but they represent through sports, athletics. And if you think about sports, sports has literally brought countries together. I'm talking about in times of great political divide, sports has been that central place where people aren't thinking about those things, but they're thinking about not only what's on the field, but they're rooting for the same team as each other. And when you look at Nike, that's what they project again and again and again, that consistent narrative, performance, athlete, performance, athlete, performance, athlete, obviously these big sports teams, these professional sports teams, those are the peak of that vision, but they also talk about everybody who has a body is an athlete and they speak down to that as well. And what's so important to this, especially for people who are marketing, is realizing that a lot of times the narrative that needs to take place oftentimes when you're trying to reach a wider audience is simplifying your message oftentimes versus complicating your message or trying to pander through certain audiences. I've spoken about this in a past video on this channel where we talk about the fact that there was a series that covered MWA and Jimmy Iovine and a lot of people within the music industry that could have actually boxed in the interest of the audience to being people who are interested in the music industry. However, they looked at the common thread of those individuals within that story and use the word defiant and when you use the word defiant, although it's simpler than music industry entrepreneurs or something like that, it reaches a far wider audience because there are so many people in different fields that feel like they are defiant. So many people from different walks of life that feel like they are defiant. In the same way, in the government, when you look at a lot of political messaging, there's a lot of people that feel like this should change. This should change. This should change. But if you're running for a particular office, you might not necessarily speak to every single change. You might run on the idea of change. And then you have the opposite. You have the people who want to prevent change. And even with that, a lot of times when people are thinking about what I don't want to get changed, they're thinking about something specific. However, you cast a wider net by just talking against change as a whole. However you choose to do that, Obama used the word change a lot and moving forward. Donald Trump used the word change actually in a way that flipped it back to keeping it the same in the sense of making America great again. So whether you're moving a particular product or a particular song or thinking about your brand as a whole outside of the niche that you do fit in and that you do want to continuously serve, what's the simplification in terms of the narrative that you create around it so you can connect it with more people? It's something that a lot more people should spend time thinking about. How do I simplify? How do I simplify? How do I cut the fact? All this extra stuff that doesn't really matter. Because at the end of the day, when you look at a company like Nike, Nike is number one. They don't necessarily need a lot of the bells and whistles or figuring out how to increase sales in certain ways to pander in the same way you might see company number two or three in terms of market share. They're trying to keep up. Nike doesn't have a problem with who somebody else is. Nike doesn't necessarily have to have a problem about who Kanye is. Nike just knows who they are. And when you find that positioning for yourself when it comes to your brand, then it becomes that much more powerful and you're able to connect on a far greater scale. And that's it. We'd like to know what you guys think about this video. As always, put your comments in the comment section below. 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