November 9th, 2007
Nike Helps Customers Create Cultural Currency With Nike+
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Quick Summary: Read about how Nike is helping customers create their own cultural currency with Nike+.
The Economics of Free
In an earlier post, I wrote about the ‘economics of free’ —
Free content -> Attention -> Free product -> Lock-in -> Paid bundled services -> $$$
The ‘Free content -> Free product -> Paid bundled services’ model is an extreme example of a trend we have been seeing for a while now — marketers bundling services with basically undifferentiated products in order to build a differentiation.
Free Content Can Convert Brands Into Cultural Currency
Take Nike as an example.
In spite of all the technology that supposedly goes inside a typical sports shoe, if you take away the logos, it’s almost impossible to differentiate between a Nike, a Reebok and an Adidas (or Puma or New Balance or…) shoe. So, Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas have instead focused on differentiating themselves by converting their brands into cultural currency. We have started talking about marketers becoming publishers and using free content to grab attention only now, but Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas have been doing it for decades. What’s more, it has worked out brilliantly for the sports shoe industry — even non-athletic types like yours truly have four pair of sports shoes — one for jogging, one for trekking, one for cross-training and one for tennis.
