Considering the economics of scale, your local cobbler advertising on Facebook and Google might be pretty close.
If you’re selling sports equipment — a very image-driven market — you’d have to be literally insane to not actively make interested buyers aware of your product’s existence. It’s an extremely specialized, research-heavy product that’s expensive to develop… it’s not like you’re hawking homemade cookies and can just wait until word-of-mouth gets around.
The marketing is not just for Nike, the marketing is also for people wearing Nike, to show their purchasing power.
There are other brands with sufficient scale and quality that don’t hinge their product sales on paying celebrities a ton of money. Obviously, brands have to to do some marketing, but it’s my impression that Nike is more about the image than the quality.
The marketing is not just for Nike, the marketing is also for people wearing Nike, to show their purchasing power.
Where I live, Nike have mid-range prices at most and are known for not-so-great quality. They were primarily popular among teenagers due to marketing through athletes (so I agree about the more about image than the quality), though they wear them as everyday shoes.
I do not know about the US market, but here most adults will either not care and are not brand sensitive (and will buy Nike, Puma, Adidas, NB, or any other low to mid-price/quality brands) or buy European brands that are generally 2x or 3x the price of Nike but last for years (e.g. I have some pairs of Ecco that still look like new three years later).
I’d rather go barefoot than count on Ecco. They feel so comfortable up until the sole spontaneously falls apart some random Thursday. I posted pictures of my crummy Eccos online after they refused to fix them under warranty. People started finding the pictures after googling “Ecco shoes suck” and “Ecco shoes fall apart”, and some started sending me their own pictures. It turned into a whole thing. During the 2010s, I was getting about 250,000 hits a year on my gallery of their crummy shoes.
There are better quality brands than Nike. Ecco isn’t one of them, and unless things have radically improved there, their customer service is horrid.
Weird, I have had them for years now without any issues. I contacted customer support once because some laces were unraveling faster than I expected for a premium brand. They sent me some packs for free.
I just looked on Amazon and the prices for Nike are comparable to all other major American sports sneaker brands. Give me an example of an athletic shoe company with lower prices than Nike with noticeably better quality that doesn’t market their products heavily.
Consider the percentage of sales those endorsements take up. Advertising is expensive for everyone. Doing a version of it that’s 60% less effective to save 20% of the cost is penny wise and pound foolish.
If you’re selling sports equipment — a very image-driven market — you’d have to be literally insane to not actively make interested buyers aware of your product’s existence. It’s an extremely specialized, research-heavy product that’s expensive to develop… it’s not like you’re hawking homemade cookies and can just wait until word-of-mouth gets around.