How Michael Jordan helped create the notion of 'brand'

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Like millions of other people, I’ve been not-so-quietly obsessed with the Michael Jordan-produced ESPN docu-series about Michael Jordan. A couple disclosures: I am a Knicks fan (I know) who grew up during the Jordan Era. But I also think Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time. And finally, I think nostalgia is a hell of a drug, where the side effects of wistfully looking back at yesteryear are both necessary and dangerous. 

Watching the series, it’s hard not to see this as Jordan trying to control an image he believes, rightly or wrongly, that has slipped through his fingers. Time marches on for all of us; memories fade on the one hand, calcify on the other. What better way to remind people who you are (were?) than to put it on film?

But the thing that I find most interesting about this Jordan hagiography is the idea of “brand.” 

Jordan as brand, sure. We know His Airness spent years building his brand, an influencer before the wave of influencers hit the digital shores. But Jordan also played a leading role in creating the ‘brand;’ the idea that a company was something other than an entity that made products. Nike, before Jordan, just made kicks. After Jordan, it was a “brand,” a signifier representing cool, fresh, youth.

Sure, athlete-as-endorsers have been a thing since 1905, when star shortstop Honus Wagner signed a deal with baseball bat company Louisville Slugger to use his old Herbie Hancock on baseball bats that would be sold in stores. 

And yes, big companies like P&G and Unilever had brand managers as early as the 1950s, understanding that a target audience existed for their products. A whole entire television show was made about these types of people. You may have heard of it? 

But in the early 1990s, the magic of Jordan was Midas-like. It didn’t hurt that Jordan played a sport that doesn’t require any helmets or masks; we all know what Jordan looks like when he takes off from the free throw line. The same isn’t true as we watch Jerry Rice fly down the sidelines. 

The New Yorker, in 1998, wrote:

“The man’s grandeur on the court—the dunks, the jump shots, the steals, the midair acrobatics—has tended to obscure another historic achievement: Michael Jordan has become the greatest corporate pitchman of all time.”

Perhaps the biggest brand that Jordan built: the NBA. Yes, the league already had its Mt. Olympus, but as The Last Dance showed, with Jordan and the Dream Team entering the 1992 Olympics, the league became global. Everyone wanted to be like Mike. 

In that same New Yorker piece, Jordan acknowledges his role in brand-building: 

“It could easily be a matter of timing, where society was looking for something positive,” he says. “It could easily be a sport that was gradually bursting out into global awareness at a time when I was at the top. And then there’s the connections that I’ve had with corporate America since I started with Coca-Cola and then went to Nike, which has gone totally global.”  

Jordan didn’t make McDonald’s or Gatorade or Coca-Cola household names. The Golden Arches and Coke, in the 1980s and 1990s were already one of the most recognizable companies in the world. 

But what Jordan did was usher in the role of how a brand, once a sterile company, can make an emotional connection to people. The notion of meaning, a fungible concept at best, serves as the backbone to today’s marketing. Especially when it comes to the use of influencers, whether celebrity or the newfangled ones in your Instagram feed.

“Celebrities ‘own’ their meanings because they have created them on the public stage by dint of intense and repeated performance,” wrote Grant David McCracken, an anthropologist. 

Marketing professor Nancy Lough told Edgar magazine in 2018:

“Brands want to leverage their profile via the image of the athletes they endorse, so a likable image is important – if Roger Federer is showing me he wears Rolex, I might well like the brand because I like him. But under that there is still a deeper emotional connection at play: he is, after all, the greatest tennis player of all time, so maybe Rolex is the greatest watch too. It tends to work – but not always.”

And here lies the brilliance of Jordan, the brand-maker: Jordan is both hero and celebrity. Historian Daniel Boorstin, writing, perhaps prophetically, in 1962: 

“The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knowness … The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media. The hero is a big man; the celebrity is a big name.”

Jordan, embodying both hero and celebrity, managed to lift every ship. Marketers, since Jordan, have tried to replicate the dual nature of hero/celebrity. It’s no surprise that the sports world leads the pack: Serena, LeBron, Brady. And it’s no surprise that companies now use as many tools to build a brand, to do whatever it can to connect with its audience. It’s why @wendys and @steak_umm and Brand Twitter exists.

Jordan’s legacy will be dissected for generations as a transformational person, mixing athletics with business, societal importance without the adherence to a political ideology or conviction, the ability to sell products and an image.

10 minutes of Michael Jordan commercials:

Thank you, again, for subscribing to this little newsletter. If you have thoughts on Jordan and branding, or just want to say hi, drop me a line.

Some interesting links:

• What happened to Val Kilmer? (New York Times Magazine)

• Facebook now has a ‘Supreme Court’ for content moderation. Its flaw is in its existence. (NBC News)

• Facebook has a new app to expand internet access in developing nations. (The Verge)

• New York Times has a new ad on its years-long Truth Matters campaign. (YouTube)

• Time introduces Time For Kids in Spanish (Time)

• Smartphone data shows out-of-state visitors flocked to Georgia as restaurants and other businesses reopened. (Washington Post)