According to Quartz, Nike has long recognized its attempt to sell more gear to women as a top priority.
So, naturally, as the final seconds of the 2019 World Cup ran down, and team USA claimed its victory, Nike wasted no time in seizing its grand marketing opportunity.
Moments after the match ended, the company released a commercial celebrating the US women’s national team’s 4th cup victory and released jerseys commemorating the win.
The final was a bigger draw than the 2018 men’s final…
And it’s only 3rd all-time for Women’s World Cup games, behind the 2015 final and the final match in 1999 — yes, the Mia Hamm episode (which had 18m viewers).
But The World Cup as a whole absolutely eviscerated ratings records, bringing in an approximate global audience of 1B viewers across all platforms.
Yesterday, Nike’s ads had more than 5m views on the Nike Women Instagram account, more than 4m views on YouTube, and more than 93k retweets on Twitter… and climbing.
MVP of brand awareness
Although Adidas was an official sponsor of the tournament, the swoosh sponsored all but 10 of the 24 teams, including the US and the Netherlands.
On top of that, the commemorative jerseys sold out online — and Nike jersey sales of other women’s apparel related to the tournament were up 150% compared to 2015.