• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, January 2, 2025

 Nike has promised investors that it will out-market its way out of a sales decline, and two new spots from the athletic giant may hint at those new directions.

Just in time for football playoffs, Nike’s “I Told You So” carries on with the company’s latest pivot to defiant winners, who aren’t the least bit gracious about the competition they are gleefully trampling. The video features some of the season’s most memorable plays, including the electrifying backward hurdle of Philadelphia Eagle’s Saquon Barkley. (Nike had already commemorated the instantly iconic move by making a backward ad to show it off.)

The new spot echoes the in-your-face sentiments of the “Winning Isn’t For Everyone” campaign Nike launched during the Summer Olympics, with the matter-of-fact voiceover breaking down football excellence. “Look, I told you what it was,” he says. “I told you, 'Dinner's ready, and I'm out here cooking.’ Didn’t I say that? I gave you the play, dropped you a pin. Where were you? Staring up at the clouds, saying, 'Where’d my lunch money go?’”

The company also dropped a new animated Jordan spot, “A People’s History of the Air Jordan 1." The two-minute video illustrates the brand’s 1985 birth. It too channels a defiance that may offer a few hints at new directions for the brand.

In his first earnings call as president and CEO, Elliott Hill recently promised that his homecoming to the company would bring a return to the brand’s product and marketing glory. “We’re going to let Nike be Nike again,” he said, “including big, bold marketing moments.”

That includes shifting ad spending and focus away from digital and performance marketing –tactics many blame for the company’s current woes – to the sports storytelling it’s become best known for.

“We will reinvest in our brands to create stories that inspire and emotionally connect with our consumers during important sports moments and critical product launches,” he said.

Those remarks came as the company revealed that revenues for the second quarter of its fiscal year fell 8% to $12.4 billion. Direct revenues for the period dropped 13% to $5 billion. And wholesale revenue for the quarter eased 3% to $6.9 billion.