Dan Wieden, who was responsible for the \u0022Just Do It\u0022 slogan in 1988 that catapulted Nike into a multibillion\u002Ddollar company, died Sept. 30.
It took years for Mr. Wieden and Kennedy to gain a foothold in the industry, as Nike also gave its business to the giant Chiat/Day firm to handle its advertising for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games. But Wieden+Kennedy’s ad the next year – featuring Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground riding a Honda scooter through New York City to the backtrack of his 1972 hit “Walk on the Wild Side,” impressed Knight with its moody intensity.
Mr. Wieden said he read Norman Mailer’s acclaimed 1979 book about Gilmore, “The Executioner’s Song,” and remembered that the death-row prisoner was asked if he had any last words before being shot. The brazen cheekiness of the response – “Let’s do it!” – stuck with him. Scribbling on a notebook, he wrote, at first “Do It,” later adding the “Just.”
Over the next several decades, Nike sales boomed 1,000 percent, with the “Just Do It” ads featuring prominent athletes such as Michael Jordan and Colin Kaepernick. Wieden+Kennedy was also behind the clever “Bo Knows” commercials for Nike’s cross-training shoes featuring athlete Bo Jackson and blues-rock guitarist Bo Diddley.Article content
Veteran British advertising executive Alfredo Marcantonio wrote in an email: “In the sixties, Doyle Dane Bernbach and its fellow New York hotshots ruled the world so far as creative advertising was concerned. They so inspired the likes of London’s Collett Dickenson Pearce that the center of creative excellence crossed the Atlantic. It was Dan Wieden in Portland and also the late Pat Fallon in Minneapolis, far from Madison Avenue, who powered the U.S.
He graduating from the University of Oregon in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. The previous year, he had married fellow student Bonnie Scott and soon began a fitful early career as floor manager for a local TV station and writing marketing copy for the forest‐products company Georgia-Pacific Corp. He said he was fired from the latter because he could barely contain his boredom.
Both left around 1980 for the William Cain Agency, where Mr. Wieden said he found himself dreading his work for yet another lumber company in the Pacific Northwest. But one client, Nike, fascinated them. Mr. Wieden and Kennedy jumped at the challenge to build a brand for the sports-shoe company lagging far behind its competitors. They quit Cain in 1982 to start their own firm, luring Nike as their sole client.
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Dan Wieden, adman who coined 'Just Do It' for Nike, dies at 77Dan Wieden, who was responsible for the \u0022Just Do It\u0022 slogan in 1988 that catapulted Nike into a multibillion\u002Ddollar company, died Sept. 30.
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Dan Wieden, adman who coined 'Just Do It' for Nike, dies at 77Dan Wieden, who was responsible for the \u0022Just Do It\u0022 slogan in 1988 that catapulted Nike into a multibillion\u002Ddollar company, died Sept. 30.
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