In a very brand driven business and organisation like Nike, brand function, brand strategy and branding execution has a prominent position that permeates all aspects of business operations. Given the importance of brand and branding and importance of wholesale as a channel – it’s not surprising that Nike established a dedicated (digital) brand team and department solely focused on brand support of wholesale partners. In 2013, being early to recognize the growth promise of online and e-commerce sales and being on the forefront of trends, Nike organizes a digital brand support department for wholesale.com partners. The department’s single mission was driving digital brand business growth of wholesale partners with nascent e-commerce capabilities and partnering with, then only emerging, today, sport and fashion online retail powerhouses. This newly formed, almost start-up like, team was tasked with continuous digital brand enablement of category’s growth and sales targets with individual and group accounts across Western Europe. To be able to operationalize brand strategy execution in a context of a complex global organization implementing centralized global branding and diverse and extensive network of wholesale partner network there were two significant structural transformations to be made. First, centralization of digital brand management and execution and, second, tiering of wholesale partner’s branding support. 

 

 

During the period between 2013 – 2016 SO DIGITAL created and implemented numerous digital brand projects across wholesale.com that were aimed at elevating Nike and associated brands as well as achieving commercial goals. Projects ranged from creation and implementation of bespoke interactive animated banners for campaign launch support of exclusive releases, to landing pages supporting major campaigns, but also dedicated brand stores like Nike SB digital brand store on Size.co.uk and Jordan online flagship store on Footlocker.eu