Phil Knight, founder of Nike and creator of Sports Marketing in 1957, Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman met at the University of Oregon; the first, runner athlete and later graduate student in business administration at Stanford University, California, and the second, recognized athletic trainer who continually experimented with new designs for athletic shoes. Knight was always a man with a vision of the future; in his postgraduate thesis at Stanford University he indicated that the success was in designing a high quality product in the United States, manufacturing it in Asia, and selling it in the United States at prices lower than the then popular East German sneakers that were commercialized in that period. In 1962, Knight contacted the Japanese …show more content…
Even after graduating, he continued to act as a representative of the firm, moving through teams and universities and helping to forge the culture of the company. This practice of sponsoring promising athletes continues to this day and is a key part of Nike's commercial success. In the eighties Nike, with a contracted advertising agency -Wieden & Kennedy-, started making advertisements. And it was in these years, too, that among young Americans it became fashionable to wear sneakers and casual clothes on the street, a fashion that Nike knew how to make the most of. In 1985 came one of the key moments of Nike when he decided to bet on the promise of basketball, Michael Jordan of North Carolina, who had recently joined the Chicago Bulls. Nike soon realized that Jordan was a gold mine and began designing a line of footwear inspired and publicized by Michael Jordan as Air Jordan shoes or Air Flight. The NBA considered these shoes illegal, since it only allowed white and these were black with red. Consequently, Jordan had to pay $ 1,000 per game, but the controversy was such that it caused sales to skyrocket. It was in these years also that Nike launched one of the most famous slogans in the history of advertising, in force today - "Just Do