One of the world’s most successful and most famous marketing slogans, Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ is hiding a much more sinister past with ties to a convicted Death Row murderer
Nike is one of the world’s largest sports and clothing brands – and chances are that at some point, you’ve owned a pair of one of their trainers. But, before the business was valued at more than $100 billion, it was a much smaller operation started by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight and his coach, Bill Bowerman.
The brand has lived by its classic slogan ‘Just Do It’ for nearly all of its history. This motto has been posted across everything from giant billboards to hoodies worn around the world. It seems perfectly innocent and motivational at first glance, but people are only just realising it has much more sinister origins.
It turns out the slogan has a chilling connection with an infamous double murderer who caught headlines around the world nearly 50 years ago.
The words plastered across your favourite T-shirt can actually all be traced back to the dying words of Gary Gilmore, a convicted killer who was handed a death sentence by firing squad in Utah in 1977.
He gained attention after the verdict. His mother and other campaigners tried to get his sentence switched to life in jail, but instead Gilmore insisted he wanted to face a firing squad.
Before lining up in front of police gunmen, Gilmore was asked if he had any last words, to which he replied, “Let’s do it”.
Around 10 years later, marketing executive Dan Wieden was brought onto the Nike project, tasked with coming up with a catchy slogan.
Unearthing the story, MrBallen on YouTube explained: “So for hours they sat pitching different ideas, pitching different concepts of who they could elevate this brand.
“But even though a lot of the ideas were promising, nothing really felt right. There was no slam-dunk idea, or at least not yet. So as Dan is beginning to get frustrated, realising he doesn’t have many great ideas, he suddenly has this epiphany.
“As Dan was just sitting there thinking about Gilmore’s execution, he remembered a very particular detail and for whatever reason, he thought ‘Oh my goodness, why could we use that’.”
A small tweak of the words and the “Just Do It” slogan was born, going on to double the company’s worth and making it a global icon.
But understanding the origin has understandably left many people feeling uneasy. Responding to the YouTube video, one commenter wrote: “I’ll never hear that slogan the same way again”, while another added: “Yeah, I don’t know if I want to do it at all anymore.”
Although nobody understands what brought Dan Wieden’s mind to the chilling case from ten years before that meeting, the slogan has undoubtedly gone down in history as one of the most successful marketing moves ever.
