all-stars and rappers

(Song: "Blueprint" 2 by Jay-z)
So last week, Mike Hansen, who does marketing for Nike, came and spoke to one of my classes. Of course, Nike does an excellent job with marketing, and so there was a lot to show and tell, but one of the most interesting points that he brought up was how Nike decided to integrate pop artists into their marketing mix by using popular pop songs in their commercials. He said, "We found that pop artists just wanna be athletes and athletes just wanna be pop artists." At first glance, I would probably just think, Hey, cool commercial, I like that song. But it really does go deeper than that because a popular pop song will attract the music fans in addition to the dedicated sports followers. By placing their brand at the intersection between all-star athletes and pop artists, Nike successfully made their product image even more popular. The presentation made me wonder why more brands haven't tried this, but I think Nike really got it right with this strategy.