• by Joe Marchese , October 16, 2007

Is Nike a consumer-products or a new-media company? It sounds like a ludicrous question, until you consider the shifting resource focus of Nike's brand gurus highlighted in this week's Louise Story article in The New York Times. "We want to find a way to enhance the experience and services, rather than looking for a way to interrupt people from getting to where they want to go," says Stefan Olander, global director for brand connections at Nike, in the article. "How can we provide a service that the consumer goes, 'Wow, you really made this easier for me?'" he continues.

Describing the effect of Nike's new social community Web site, Trevor Edwards, Nike's corporate vice president for global brand and category management, says, "It's a very different way to connect with consumers.... People are coming into it on average three times a week. So we're not having to go to them."

It's as if brands sponsoring social media communities and services are this generation's equivalent of the way soap companies used to sponsor daytime dramas (thus, "soap operas"). It seems, in times when media companies, agencies and technologies are lagging in their ability to deliver effective connections to people in shifting media environments, the brands will sponsor and create their own content to find those connections. The struggle is that for every brilliant and successful campaign like the Nike example above, and other examples cited in the article (and I felt they were just that, brilliant examples of brands leveraging social media), the landscape is littered with the attempts of brands and products in every category trying, and failing, to create community and content.

It gets back to the fundamental question: Where is the line drawn between brand and media? Undoubtedly, Nike's expertise in all things running gives it a significant advantage in its attempts to create value-added services and content, as well as foster online communities when it comes to running. But to what end can Nike's subject-matter expertise in running compete for attention with the high quality media options created by those with subject-matter expertise in media itself (online and off) and/or the high quantity media options created by vast social media options (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube...)?

Equally effective, with less risk, seems to be Adidas' and Reebok's efforts to plug into existing social media, rather than focus on creating their own. The thinking is simple. If a brand bets on creating the community, it takes all of the risk and receives all of the reward. But if a brand looks to identify, support/sponsor and enhance the social media communities/services people already use, then that brand can remove the risk of having to be an effective new-media company in order to maintain the health of its brand (a risky proposition).

Think about it. The article mentions various content that Nike has created on its own that people really appreciate. What's the difference between Nike developing content that people appreciate, and surrounding that content with its brand, or anyone (professional or amateur) creating content that the same people really appreciate, with Nike as a sponsor? The difference is effective integration, just as with the soap operas.

While I am sure brands would love to replicate the successes described in the article without having to build the communities themselves, it's up to new media and new-media technologies to present brands with the proper access and integration. So maybe for the time being, the only way for brands to achieve effective integration (and added value) in new media will be to create the media themselves, but I would hazard a guess that it's just a stopgap until advertising technologies and media companies can catch up with brands' demand for integration and value-add in a landscape dominated by consumer media choice and control. What do you think?