Content area
Full Text
Complex (2020) previously featured an interesting story about the banning of Michael Jordan's shoes in 1984:
The story goes that Michael Jordan was fined $5,000 by the NBA every time he wore the shoes during their debut in 1984 because their colors broke the league's uniform rules. The league even wrote an infamous letter to Nike in February 1985 explaining that the black and red shoes were prohibited. Nike capitalized on this, reportedly paying the fines for Jordan and creating an ad campaign that played on that forbidden fruit quality.
In what may be the most famous story in sport brand history, rumors of the National Basketball Association (NBA) banning Jordan's sneakers began circulating in 1984. The next year, Nike debuted the Air Jordan 1. Fueled by the myth of the NBA's ban, the shoes were hugely successful, selling between three to four million pairs in the first year of their release (Complex, 2020). However, there was no picture or photo evidence of Jordan wearing the banned colorway in an NBA game. In fact, the Air Jordan 1 was not even the same model that Jordan had previously worn. Nonetheless, the storytelling from Nike's marketing campaign seized on the lore of the incident and captivated consumers. The history of the Jordan 1 is a prime example of how brand stories can create emotional connections between a product and a consumer (Escalas, 2004; Kim and Sullivan, 2019).
Having an intriguing and fascinating brand story can captivate a consumer's mind (Aaker and Aaker, 2016). It is common to see mega global sport equipment brands, such as Nike and Adidas, advertise their products via storytelling. For instance, whenever Nike advertises the Air Jordan 1 series, they provide stories such as Jordan's outstanding performance while he was playing at the University of North Carolina or the behind-the-scene history (e.g. “the Banned”). Moreover, Adidas utilizes the storytelling strategy as well, and consumers can find a product's story including the functionality of the shoe, creation of the design or inspiration and introduction from the official website (e.g. Harden Vol. 4). The function of the story is not just to merely give product information to the consumers, but its ultimate goal is to obtain the attention of consumers and to help their...