SPOTLIGHT: NIKE IS BACK. AND WOMEN ARE (STILL) A GROWTH STRATEGY

Image credit: Skims x Nike

Is Nike innovating for women while other brands take a step back?

With International Women’s Day in the bag for 2025, many brands are going back to business as usual. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is fading into the background for some of the biggest companies on the planet. And of course Mark Zuckerberg wants more “masculine energy” in the workplace because, in his own words, the world has become culturally neutered. It’s safe to say there is fresh heat around women’s place in culture (welcome to America, and to Spotify, Andrew Tate). From where I sit, empowering women feels like it’s going out of fashion.

And yet despite this context, Nike has gone bigger on backing women in 2025. Why?

Well, the company had a low point in 2024: sales fell around the world, shares dropped a humungous 60% from their 2021 peak (admittedly that year was the highest point in the history of Nike, which saw profits soar by 196%), and the company’s relationship with major retailers reportedly hit a downward spiral. 

With last year being a difficult year for the brand, it’s worth noting that it followed the year they announced 2023 as “The Year of the Woman”. Huh. So their intentions for women didn’t exactly hit the jackpot straight away. In fact - whether causation or correlation - focusing on women did nothing to stop the most disastrous year on record for the company.

Despite launching period proof apparel and later the Well Collective focused on women, according to multiple sources, the company recorded around $8.5 billion in revenue generated from women’s apparel in 2024, less than half the $20.8 billion it made off of men’s apparel. Women’s inclusivity, or at least the way it’s been done until now, has not felt like a successful growth opportunity.

Image credit: Period proof shorts from Nike

And yet with the world still constituting 50% women and girls, the opportunity to serve this audience is immense. Especially when you look at the brand’s mission, and who the brand considers an “athlete”:

To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.

*If you have a body, you are an athlete.

So was the growth opportunity wrongly sized (do women just not need sport apparel? Are they not doing sports?), or was the issue that growing the brand with women is more nuanced, and has taken a minute to get the formula right, especially when a brand like Nike can’t afford to alienate their core (i.e. men)? 

Well it appears Nike have taken stock of everything they’ve learned as an innovator in this space, and they’re ready to go again, reclaiming the opportunity to include women in sport in a very “Nike way”.

The opportunity is still huge: Sizing the prize for women in sport

Contrary to many other industries who are cautious about the role of women going forward, the context for women in sport this year is exciting.

To quote Claire Poole, the CEO of Sport Positive “The past few years have seen women’s sports grow at a “meteoric pace”. FIFA reported 3.2 billion views of their social and digital content for 2023 Women’s World Cup, and the 2023 U.S. Open women’s final outperformed the men’s final in viewership. In 2024, the Paris Olympics had an equal number of male and female athletes competing for the first time.”

And brands are paying attention: “Women’s sport sponsorship is growing 50% faster than men’s major leagues, and is exceeding return on investment expectations. 86% of sponsors in a recent survey said their investment in women’s sports met or exceeded expectations, with one third reporting their activations delivered better than expected results”. You can read Claire’s full article on Forbes here.

So how is Nike leaning into INCLUDING WOMEN IN SPORT, having struck out previously? 

1.By showing up consistently, in good times and bad: They’ve publicly committed to levelling the playing field for women, and are still committed to advancing gender equity within the organisation, as they say on their website “Nike's ambition is to be her biggest champion, and we are focused more than ever on levelling the playing field for her—on the pitch or the court, and within our own walls”. They are still (at the time of writing this article) committed to “50% representation of women in global corporate workforce and 45% in leadership positions” by the end of 2025”. Check out the commitments here, re-released in 2023. But of course diversity commitments don’t mean a tonne in business unless this diversity translates into performance. Which it hasn’t recently within the company. So what else?

2.By understanding what makes them uniquely them, and focusing these superpowers on change: Nike is all about performance. They are a performance brand. That’s what they do best. So then everything has to perform at the highest level.

The tension lies when trying to be more inclusive in sport (because “If you have a body, you are an athlete”), whilst creating conditions and pushing narratives of performance in a way that’s true to the brand…which in of itself kinda feels exclusive.

Nike have clearly been talking to their premier athletes to set the tone for what it means to be an athlete, which is informing their big anthemic campaigns. My theory of change here is that the brand shows up in big moments to celebrate the women athletes breaking barriers at a professional level. And then the goal would be to design further activations to help other women show up to perform too, creating conditions to break their own barriers.The thing that all these women will have in common is a dedication to performance.

The brand’s recent Superbowl campaign leans heavy on performance and brings an updated frame to the various inclusivity ads from the last few years. In their main ad, Nike still brings women together to fight a system that tells them they can’t win, but the brand has gone back to its superpowers of platforming and celebrating world class athletes, with a tone that authentically captures the grit and determination of “old Nike”.  

3.By platforming others: As touched upon above, Nike has succeeded time and time again by platforming cultural figureheads and letting them do the talking in a complicated cultural context. This was the case with Colin Kaepernick in 2019, when the brand shares rose 5% after campaign launch. As new Nike Inc CMO Nicole Graham says “At Nike, we make sure the athlete is at the center of everything we do, from product creation to storytelling. We are at our best when we are representing the voice of the athlete and their voice becomes our voice. This brand anthem, featuring elite Nike athletes, is a perfect example of how we can inspire everyone to win, whatever that means for them". Check out the campaign here.

This is not a new marketing strategy, but one that allows Nike to show up through performance driven leaders in the world of sport and culture, and speak to topics that are harder to own when showing up alone as a brand.

Image credit: Nike

Image credit: Nike

4. By innovating with performance-focused women off the court: Nike has also announced their partnership with Kim Kardashian. She is not an athletic figurehead of course, but she is a masterclass in performance.

I’d argue what sets her apart is her relentless drive to learn, adapt, and innovate within the context of what the world needs right now. Take her involvement in criminal justice reform or her push for fashion inclusivity; these aren't just cause-driven acts—they're strategic, calculated moves to align her work with high-performing, world-changing initiatives. It's about performance at every level whilst moving the world forward, from her public relations to personal growth. Every step Kim takes is a calculated move towards increasing her influence, expanding her reach, and, ultimately, shaping the narrative of her empire.

And so it makes good strategic sense that Nike would innovate with KK and SKIMS, bringing a fresh approach to women’s participation in sport. The brands call the product line a merge of “NIKE, Inc.’s world-class approach to advanced innovation, sport science and athlete insights with SKIMS’ obsession for the female form and pioneering pursuit of solutions for every body”. Check out the partnership here.

This feels like a new era of women’s inclusivity in sport to me.

Image credit: Skims x Nike

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR OTHER BRANDS?

Nike have shown us recently that inclusivity is not dead. But the brands that succeed in this space will be the ones that understand their own unique superpowers and use them to move the world forward. In this case, for women in sport.

Many brands in the last few years (including Nike) spent time catching up with what the world needs - like a global awakening where people understood the reality for underserved genders, or ages, or ethnicities - but then many brands and companies responded in a way that wasn’t always true to their own histories, brands, or growth potential. This is where DEI gets murky too. A lot of companies clearly didn’t know why (ethically and/or strategically) they were diving in, so it’s been easy to reverse out of commitments and campaigns more recently.

It’s a simple frame, but many brands need to go back to basics when thinking about growth opportunities within underserved audiences, and what direction feels right for them:

Start by asking two questions.

1.What are your superpowers?

These are your brand’s unique capabilities and strengths. Those can be things like trust amongst a specific audience, credibility on a specific issue, cultural influence, a unique product innovation, or reach and visibility through powerful retailer relationships. Think specifically about superpowers across 1. Corporate Foundations 2. Brand History 3. Leadership Ambition 4. Employee Feedback 5. External Partners and 6. Business Strategy  

2.What does the world need?

Here you should reassess the societal needs in the world in full. This goes way beyond the need of your existing consumers, and includes exploring the larger cultural trends and societal shifts, the needs, expectations and ambitions of your partners such as retailers, and the dynamics of the category and market in which you operate. You should also listen to challengers of your brand, those people or groups who are critics of your brand or the category in general, to understand and learn from their point of view. And lastly, you should look at those brands like Nike who seem to bee cracking the code, to inspire confidence for new ways to show up.

When you know the answer to these questions you can design a solution that makes your brand’s response fit for purpose in the context of today’s (still very much existing) societal needs.

If anything sparks your interest in this or the following articles, please do email helen@purposefulgrowth.co