2 THE TATTOOED ANKLE

Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman met at the University of Oregon. Phil Knight was a student and Bill Bowerman was the athletics coach whose dedication led him to make running shoes by hand for his star pupils. In 1957 they founded Blue Ribbon Sports and began selling high-tech, low-priced shoes out of the back of a van in California.

In 1972, the company was renamed after the Greek goddess of victory and adopted a new logo designed for the company by a student for the princely sum of $25. Nike and the famous red swoosh are now instantly recognizable all over the world.

Like most rags to riches stories, however, there have been downs as well as ups. Most notably the bad publicity surrounding claims about the poor working conditions of Asian workers producing shoes in China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, for which Phil Knight publicly apologized. Other “downs” have included plateau-ing sales of trainers, increased competition from old stagers like Adidas, and claims that Nike put undue pressure on Brazilian coach Mario Zagello to play an unfit Ronaldo in the 1998 World Cup Final against France.

That Nike has come through these is in no small part down to its key employees. The designers are recruited from a range of backgrounds, not just from art schools. Employees come from transportation design schools, architectural design and even occasionally NASA. They are well looked after at Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. It’s a 75-acre site that’s home to sports centres, gyms, design studios and marketing suites as well as various lakes, small woods, restaurants, cafes and a day-care centre for employees’ children.

Above all these, Nike’s greatest asset is the fanatical loyalty it engenders amongst its employees. A few years ago, a sceptical journalist for The Sunday Times was being shown around the headquarters. He asked about the apocryphal stories of dedicated workers having the red swoosh tattooed on their bodies. The man conducting the tour was Nelson Farris, the Corporate Education Director, who promptly rolled up his trouser leg and said: “You mean like this?”

And the moral is that great brands inspire great loyalty. How will your brand inspire this level of loyalty?