Nike Reveals New Game Plan for Air Platform
PARIS – Nike hopes its new “innovation super-cycle” will bring it back on track.
Ahead of the Paris Olympics, the sports heavyweight revealed its latest innovations, leaning into its athletic heritage. The big reveal came after a major reshuffle of innovation and marketing functions last year.
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“We needed to get back closer to sport,” summed up Heidi O’Neill, a 25-year Nike veteran named president of consumer, product and brand last summer. “We had to relook at our brand voice: is it connecting and resonating with the world and with youth, and is our product pipeline where we need it to be?”
Centered on the Nike Air platform, new innovations include shoes for athletes in track and field, soccer and basketball, as well as new running solutions as the company seeks to make its offer easier to understand and win again in the competitive super-shoe category.
Since taking on the role, O’Neill has overhauled 50 percent of her team, aiming to reduce silos and enhance collaboration. She acknowledged Nike’s need “to heat things up from an innovation and a product pipeline perspective.” And she sees the Paris Olympics as the perfect opportunity to start presenting this focus.
“The Olympics have always been an energy point for Nike and Paris will be no different, but you’ll see innovations that will transcend the Olympics, and I think you’ll also see the power of this innovation super-cycle,” she said. When it comes to messaging, O’Neill said to expect “emotional, very sport, very athlete-connected” stories.
Key to its innovation strategy, the company is using technologies including artificial intelligence and algorithms built around athletes’ needs to configure and even co-develop shoes that help them perform better.
John Hoke, a company veteran of more than 30 years named chief innovation officer last November, commented: “We always listen to the voice of the athlete, and it was our founder, Phil Knight, who gave us that. But that’s no longer enough. We now have far more tools to go much deeper.”
At Nike’s LeBron James Innovation Center, Hoke said he works with 500 of the world’s best engineers, developers, designers, mind scientists and materials scientists. Part of his remit is harnessing data from athletes, using technologies like AI, computational design, AR and VR to develop new generations of performance products.
Hoke described the new Pegasus Premium, launching next Spring, as “the super-shoe for the everyday athlete,” with which the brand hopes to reconquer the category. The sneaker is pitched as the brand’s first sculpted, visible Air Zoom unit in a running silhouette. It features ZoomX foam in the midsole and ReactX foam in the heel.
“We’re taking…the combination of technologies like Nike Air, like our ZoomX foams, all the best craft we can possibly bring to the racing category…to the everyday runner,” said Hoke.
Another new running shoe, the Pegasus 41 launching this June, is the first in that line to feature ReactX foam, providing more than 13 percent more energy return compared with the Pegasus 40 and reducing the carbon footprint of the midsole by 43 percent. It also features Air Zoom technology. This launch will be key to Nike’s marketing plan leading up to the Olympics, O’Neill said.
O’Neill cited Nike’s recent introduction of the Air Max DN as an example of the firm’s innovation pipeline. “You’ll see us on a really great glide path for the next three years, building on that newness and bringing new shapes and forms of Air that builds on this DNA,” she said.
Further launches will include a new athleisure concept and recovery shoe. “There will be new markets, market share growth and new voice,” said O’Neill.
Ahead of the Olympics, Nike built on the introduction of the Alphafly 3 super-shoe early this year with updated spikes for track athletes including the Nike Victory 2, for middle-distance sprinters, and the Nike Maxfly 2, for distances between 100 and 400 meters. Both models are available now.
For basketball, there is the Nike G. T. Hustle 3, launching July, with energy saving technology. For soccer, the 2024 Nike Mercurial is described as the brand’s most premium boot to date.
While specifics on upcoming activations are under wraps, they will include consumer-facing events at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Nike is also leaning on its wholesale relationships to amplify its pipeline of new products.
“We’re investing in retail marketing to make sure our activations, launches and stories really come to life for consumers at wholesale as well as retail,” O’Neill said.
Craig Williams, Nike’s president of geographies and marketplace, noted the important role wholesale plays in telling Nike’s innovation story.
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve been mostly focused on historic favorites. We don’t have to really story-tell those as much, therefore focusing on direct channels satisfied most of the requirements,” he said. The new corporate strategy “necessitates a more balanced, holistic total marketplace strategy to ensure newness actually meets the consumer.”
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