Advertisement, Perception and Culture

When you glance at a Nike advertisement the first thought that come to mind is “Just do it”. This is the slogan that has gained Nike’s popularity over the course of the years. Nike has used resources such as web ads, television commercials, and billboard advertisement to market their brand. Created 1964, Nike expanded its brand making it one of the top shoe selling companies according businessinsider.com. What started off a just a simple shoes line with just a little over $1000 dollars in the bank has become a multi-million dollar company selling their product all over the world.

Nike has become a perfect prototype for successful advertisement.  However, how everyone’s views can be depicted as something else. In the American culture Nike can be considered a symbol of fashion. Americans are known for following fashions trends and sporting whatever is popular at that time. In this case, Nike has played a large role in modern day trend. In the U.S. Nike can be perceived as a good thing, something that can be desired, or sought after. When you think of Nike your think of a multi- million dollar company. You think of athletes sporting off its merchandise. You also think of clothing styles. Nike, has sort of been placed on a pedestal and praised by those to seek to purchase their merchandise. What does this say about our culture? One, it may state that our culture focuses primarily on material things, we are very well off, and we are very athletically incline. What we advertise says a lot about who we are. Nike has become a symbolic item to defining who the U.S. is. However, this perception of Nike is not the same in other locations.

In 2012, the UNICEF created a campaign expressing its opinion about Nike products and marketing tools. What was once seen as something so harmless can now be seen as something deadly. The UNICEF created an advertisement of Nike's popular logo and a young child chained and branded with a slight twist to its popular slogan illustrating “Just don’t do it”. UNICEF’s main goal was to display Nike’s use of child labor and how it is taking advantage of poorer countries to produce their product. What does this advertisement say about that culture? This can address their culture as being poorly funded, and miss-treated. This also states that there is a large problem within that culture that when it comes to unfair working conditions and mistreatment of workers. Their views on our culture can be misconstrued through the advertisement displayed by the UNICEF.

The reason why  decided to use these two examples were to display the different effects of advertisement and how it plays a large role on identifying ones culture and how advertisement plays a large role in the perception if the viewers. Here you have the same company with similar slogans creating two different meanings to depict their perception on how a product looks through their views culture. What was just something so innocent and motivational is now something degrading and misrepresented.