Brand impulse gone wrong? Nike’s Boston Marathon ad campaign was a risk it shouldn’t have taken

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Good marketing can be edgy or cheeky, even provocative. It should have a point of view and be memorable.

What it should not do is shame or insult customers.Nike seems to have missed this lesson from Marketing 101. In the run up to the Boston Marathon on Monday, an advertisement in the window of a store along the city’s Newbury Street read “Runners welcome, walkers tolerated.” The copy came across as completely at odds with the company’s “Just Do It” tagline, a call to action that in the company’s own words is “a challenge to start, to try, to move forward even when it’s hard.”This was just one ad, directed at a very specific market, but it seized the news cycle because it underlines Nike’s struggles with its brand identity at a moment when the world’s largest sportswear company can least afford it.

In October 2024, the company brought back former longtime Nike executive Elliott Hill to turn around the ailing athletic shoe and apparel maker, which has seen its stock price tumble some 75% since peaking in November 2021 and its operating income shrink by almost 50%. Hill’s fixes, including returning Nike to its roots in sports and mending its relationships with wholesalers, are taking longer to gain traction than management and investors would like.

Since 31 March, when the company said revenue is likely to decline for the current quarter and the rest of the year, the stock has dropped 15%, bringing its year-to-date losses to almost 30%.The Boston marketing misstep—coming from what’s supposed to be one of corporate America’s most astute and powerful brand builders—is not going to persuade Wall Street that Nike understands what it is. “This shows the broader confusion with the brand,” says