Nike Logo Credit: Carolyn Davidson
If you ask the average person to list the most iconic sports brands throughout history, what names come to mind? Nike would be near the top of the list. Nike is a multinational corporation known for creating a comprehensive range of sports apparel, footwear and equipment that can be seen throughout amateur and professional sports. What’s behind a business name like Nike?
The Origin of the Name
While we all know Nike today by its current name, it was founded as Blue Ribbon Sports by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight in 1964. Initially, the company was a distributor of Onitsuka Tiger (Asics) running shoes in America. Eventually, the pair tired of simply redistributing other shoes and decided to create their own product. In 1971, they were up against the deadline for distribution and needed to come up with a name.
The Portland State University graphic design student Carolyn Davidson created numerous logo design options for the company, one of which was the iconic Nike swoosh. The company settled on it and submitted a patent to register it. Blue Ribbon Sports also needed a brand name for the new shoes. Knight enjoyed the name Dimension Six, but the group wanted something different to place on the shoes.
Knight walked into the office early one morning and said that they needed a name by 9:00 AM the next day to print it on shoeboxes. The office tossed around numerous names, but nothing stood out. One employee remembered an article about memorable brand names. The article stated that the best names, like Xerox or Kleenex, had no more than two syllables and contained a unique letter or sound like Z, X or K. The next day, Johnson woke up with the name in his head—Nike.
Nike was the Greek winged goddess of victory, and the name met all the rules for being a “sticky” brand that consumers wouldn’t forget. The name stuck, and in 1971 the first Nike shoes went on sale.
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