Bill Bernbach once said “stay within the product, stay within the product”. But Dan Weiden and account manager Jim Riswold had a different take on this logic. Through Nike, They showed that you could supercharge the endorsement process by hyping the athlete and not the product.
In the spring of 1985 millions of prime-time viewers witnessed their first sight of Michael Jordan in a commercial. They watched the young basketball star move across the blacktop, leap into the air towards the basket and slam the ball. In an elongated and slow motion frame Michael Jordan stayed in the air with his legs apart for the last ten seconds of the commercial. This created the illusion to spectators that he could not only fly like a bird, but that his wings were the two rubber sneakers wrapped around his feet.
The Nike commercial, “Jordan Flight”, was replayed so often that Michael Jordan became known as Air Jordan. Over and over they showed different commercials of Jordan taking flight towards the basket, dubbing him as the man who could fly.
With its Nike campaigns, Weiden and Kennedy rewrote two of the most revered advertising adages: if you have nothing to say, have a celebrity say it; and the product should always be the hero.
Weiden helped shape athletes into articulate, coherent, personae. They weren’t saying that Michael Jordan wears Nike shoes; they were saying that Michael Jordan is a superior athlete. The commercial never states that Jordan knows the sneakers; we simply draw the inference that since he knows sports, he must know sneakers.
Michael Jordan went on to become one of the most recognizable ad spokesman and athletes in the world and helped Nike skyrocket form an 18 percent share of the sneaker market to 43 percent in just a decade. As of June 22, 1998 Fortune figures his worth to Nike alone to be $5.2 billion dollars, a number that continues to soar today.
While Weiden and Kennedy were using athletes to hype their products, Chiat/Day created one of the most memorable ads to date without ever showing the product or explaining what it’s used for.
Aired during Super Bowl XVIII, Apple ran their now famous “1984” commercial which featured a hammer-wielding heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh as a means to save humanity from “Big Brother”.
Alluding to the George Orwell novel “1984” the spot concluded with text which reads: "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984. "
The commercial turned Apple into a household name and with a single airing set a new commercial standard for production values and cinematic style. '1984' also raised the financial stakes: Apple spent a then-outlandish sum of $400,000 to produce the ad and $500,000 to air it.