Brand Breakdown Matt Young

Today’s brand is Nike, the branding powerhouse behind names such as Air Max, Air Jordan, and Converse. The iconic swoosh logo is recognizable all over the world and is valued at $26B, completely separate from the rest of the company.

Nike is known for its branding above anything else. If you think it’s because they make great shoes, did you know they don’t make their own shoes? They don’t own a single factory to make shoes. They outsource their work primarily to other manufacturers in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. People love the Nike name so much that it doesn’t matter who makes them. So how did they become so well-known?

From 1964 to 1971, Nike operated under the name “Blue Ribbon Sports” selling other shoe brands until they decided to launch their own shoes under the Nike brand name. In 1971 when Nike became Nike, they also hired Carolyn Davidson, a graphic designer to design their logo for only $35. That’s roughly $220 in today’s currency.

In 1988, Nike hired the Wieden+Kennedy ad agency who came up with their famous tagline, “Just Do It.” Ever since, it’s appeared everywhere from apparel to commercials and has become a saying general enough to resonate with just about anyone anywhere in the world.

These are the two cornerstones of Nike branding besides selling quality clothing products. Of course, they, like every other major company out there, profit from controversy. Let’s look at a few:

Did you know that Colin Kaepernick is a spokesperson for Nike? He has consistently made the news for his stances on police brutality. At first it was assumed that bringing him onboard was a bad PR move, however, it seems to have benefitted Nike in the long run with a 31% boost in sales after the, “Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything.” campaign.

On the other end of the spectrum, A former Nike athlete says, “When I first arrived [at the Oregon Project], an all-male Nike staff became convinced that in order for me to get better, I had to get thinner, and thinner, and thinner.” This was Mary Cain, one of the world’s top mid-distance runners for her age when she was only 18. After being recruited to Nike, she recalls, “This Nike team was the top running program in the country, and yet we had no certified sports psychologist. There was no certified nutritionist. It was really just a bunch of people who were Alberto’s friends.” Nike’s Alberto Salazar has denied many claims that Mary Cain has made, but he has been banned from track running for 4 years on doping charges, and the now-former CEO of Nike, Mark Parker, has stepped down as CEO in response to these allegations.

Related more to their products, Nike released a shoe called the Vaporfly that has proven to increase running performance. Using a blend of carbon fiber and a special polymer, it eases the force placed on a runner’s legs. This has been called out in the running community as a form of “technological doping,” but the shoes have officially been granted permission to use in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, assuming they still happen.

As far as creating their products goes, we briefly touched on the fact that they don’t manufacture their own shoes. Nike sources their products from countries such as China and Mexico who have lax standards when it comes to employee treatment. Over the years, Nike tried to improve their compensation for workers that create their products, but as recently as 2011 Nike themselves admitted that some of the factories producing their Converse shoes did not meet Nike's internal standards for employee treatment.

It all began with Chuck Taylor. He was a former Semi-pro basketball player who really found his calling in shoes. The Chuck Taylor All-star while not officially a signature shoe is the first shoe named for and sold by a basketball player and it is still popular to this day even after almost 100 years. Since then there have been many shoes by many different players and brands but there is one brand that stands alone as the one true king of the signature shoe. Jordan.

As the reigning rookie of the year and first time all-star, Michael Jordan had a massive reputation. This led to him being a hot commodity that many brands were actively trying to sponsor. He was originally signed by Nike for around $500k annually, but as the brand grew in popularity that figure rose rapidly. Michael Jordan initially had his doubts about the shoe. He was worried he might look like a clown. Up to this point, every shoe worn in the NBA was a standard color while his new shoes would be red & black.

Those red & black shoes famously became known as the “banned version” which made their popularity go through the roof. Michael Jordan actually got fined every single game he wore them, and Nike kept paying the fines for him, telling him to keep wearing the shoes.

There are several reasons that led to Jordan being one of the most popular shoe brands, like the immense star power that Jordan had during his career. As well as the relationship the NBA has always had with shoes, but what really sets the Jordan brand apart is how it became a part of popular culture. This was accomplished through their marketing.

Celebrity endorsement is a tactic used by many highly reputable brands including Beats headphones, a.k.a Beats by Dre, which happened to be Dr. Dre using his own personal brand as leverage. Other examples include:


Coca Cola and Taylor Swift

Sprite and Lebron James

K-Swiss and Gary Vaynerchuk

Nike and Tiger Woods

Puma and Usain Bolt


And so on and so forth.

They’re known for running limited edition campaigns, where only a certain amount of a shoe model is sold, giving it rarity, exclusivity, and consequently higher value. This is simple economics: when the demand is higher than the supply, the value goes up. This enables Nike to produce less shoes and make more profit.

Other companies use this marketing strategy as well like Supreme and Justin Bieber’s clothing brand, Drew House.

A side effect of running limited edition campaigns is that people begin to create counterfeit products, imitations, and “unauthorized authentic” products, which means that everything is the same as the products from the original brand including material, design, and sourcing, except that it’s being sold by a different company.

In 2014, Air Jordans saw a drastic dip in sales. According to Business Insider, Matt Cohen, a sneaker collector and the vice president of business development and strategy at GOAT Group, told Business Insider he believed this dip was due to “a shift in fashion and a lack of consumer connection to Jordan, the man.”

Since then the brand has had a fashion renaissance. It’s had collaborations in the past few years with other brands. Sneakerheads have become more popular, and Jordan has been releasing more limited edition models. Nike released a retro version of the original Jordan line which ultimately flopped because of a higher price tag and just less public interest in the brand at that time.

Hey, what’s up, guys? This is Brand Breakdown, and I’m your host, Matt Young. Brand Breakdown is a show where we take a company, breakdown its brand perception, and paint a picture of how people came to perceive it that way. If you want us to review your brand, drop a comment or email me at matt@forwardvibe.com.

Today’s brand is Airbnb, the company that lets you turn your house or apartment into a bed & breakfast and where you can find places to stay all over the world while living with locals. You might also get a whole place to yourself depending on where you go. The concept of Airbnb is widely accepted now, but it was a wild concept beforehand that people would allow strangers to sleep in their homes for money.

The company started in 2007 and was tens of thousands of dollars in debt by 2008. They even sold “limited edition” cereal boxes to continue funding the company during tough times, which obviously is a far cry from home sharing. The reason why they ended up growing to the scale they’re at today is because they worked with YCombinator, a world-renowned business incubator. The only reason they even got into YCombinator is because they were able to sell those limited edition cereal boxes for $40 each. Essentially, YCombinator didn’t believe in the general concept behind the business, but they believed in the sales abilities of the Airbnb founders.

Once at YCombinator, the Airbnb founders were given the advice to go out and meet every single one of their hosts and get to know them before the company became too large to meet everyone, so that’s exactly what the founders did. They traveled between California and New York taking pictures of properties and speaking with homeowners about their experiences and gathering feedback from them. These testimonials paved the roadmap for Airbnb years later down the line.

The culture behind the executive team of Airbnb that built the company was persistence and the will to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. This kept operations going even when the owners had taken on tens of thousands in personal debt. In some ways, you could say this is why people have great experiences with Airbnb services, because the culture from the top down is so strong.

Airbnb provides accommodations for people all over the world, over 200 countries. Its most common cities are Tokyo, Paris, and New York City. The largest demographic that uses Airbnb is Millennials, who have made up over 60% of total rentals to-date.

On the hosting end, seniors are the most likely to be Airbnb hosts with elderly women having the highest average host rating of any demographic. There are a few Airbnb hosts who make 7-figures a year from their rentals. One even made 15 million in one year, and with numbers like these, you can expect high quality living conditions as more people compete to provide better experiences for their clients.

Hey, what’s up, guys? This is Brand Breakdown, and I’m your host, Matt Young. Brand Breakdown is a show where we take a company, break down its brand perception, and paint a picture of how people came to perceive it that way. If you want us to review your brand, drop a comment or email me at matt@forwardvibe.com.

Today’s brand is Gucci, a high-end clothing brand that turns 100 years old next year in 2021. Gucci is often perceived as luxury and elite, inaccessible to the average consumer. It is reserved for those of a higher social standing, so many strive to be able to wear their products as signals of wealth and success.

I looked on their site before putting this video together, and their tennis shoes cost over $600. Isn’t that insane? But that’s one of the ways they target their audience. There is a whole market for apparel that costs more than the general public can afford, which gives it a feeling of exclusivity reserved for the successful. This feeling of elitism permeates the Gucci brand and everything they produce. It’s why it’s so highly sought after.

If just any apparel company today started pricing their clothing through the roof, they would go out of business very quickly due to a lack of sales. Gucci positioned themselves using influences from Paris, an international fashion hub for the last 150 years.

Gucci’s founder is Guccio Gucci, whose initials, GG, can be found all over Gucci’s products. In 1921 he first opened a small leather-goods shop in Florence, Italy. Around 30 years later, WWII had caused a shortage of leather, so Gucci created its first signature material, woven hemp with small interconnected brown diamonds. Gucci soon after packed his bags and moved to New York with his son to grow the business in America.

One of the things that Gucci noticed while in Paris was that the wealthy all wore items related to horses like racing and polo shirts. This inspiration carried on through several decades, and when brought to America was an instant hit in the form of Gucci loafers, which people came to associate with the European aristocrats.

After this success, Gucci opened up several stores on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, but cultural problems within the company like rude salespeople and siestas in New York eventually led Gucci to desperation. They began releasing cheap items like lighters and keychains that ultimately hurt the brand image, and internal family problems with Gucci caused drastic changes in management.

In the early 1990s, a man named Tom Ford with incredible insight into the fashion industry took over and revamped Gucci into a sexy, modern brand while maintaining its French and Italian design roots. This is the Gucci brand that people know today: an aged, sophisticated brand with an understanding of modern design and a history of high-end tastes.

One of the ways that Gucci stays up to date with its market is by using material from environmentally friendly sources as well as doing their best to reduce waste, paper, and water in all offices, warehouses, stores, and production sites.

If you like our content about branding, want us to review your brand, or want to work with us, please let us know in the comments or by emailing me at matt@forwardvibe.com. This has been Brand Breakdown with your host, Matt Young. Peace.

Today’s company is Amazon - the largest online retailer in the United States and one of the largest companies in the entire world. In 2019, they made over 280 BILLION dollars in sales. You might only know them for their online shopping and 2-day free shipping, but most of their profits actually come from their software services known as AWS, Amazon Web Services. They dominate a third of the entire cloud computing market according to Statista.com where they made a profit of over 7 billion dollars in 2019 alone.  Still, they’re the Walmart of online shopping, the first place most people think to look when they want something shipped to their house. They make so many online sales that they deliver over 1 million packages every single day.  As well as hosting millions of sellers, Amazon also sells its own products like the Kindle, Fire Stick, and of course their Alexa products like the Amazon Echo.  Amazon’s biggest acquisition was Whole Foods back in 2017 for 13.7 billion dollars. Previously nicknamed “Whole Paycheck,” Whole Foods became Amazon’s gateway into the food industry. Since then, they have begun testing their “grocery store of tomorrow,” Amazon Go Grocery, a cashier-less grocery store. This is just my own speculation, but I think Amazon will end up running grocery stores the same way they run their warehouses: with robots running most of the show, stocking items and picking them off shelves, putting them onto an assembly line to be packaged and delivered right to your door. Tell me what you think will happen.  Of course, Amazon didn’t break into the top of the most valuable companies list by using only the most clean-cut business practices. They are notorious for having an extremely demanding work culture. There have been reports of warehouse employees having to pee in plastic bottles because they weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom while on shift.  Amazon is also notoriously anti-union. Amazon says, “We are not anti-union, but we are not neutral either.” This quote is from a training video for Whole Foods managers after their acquisition in 2017. Less than 10 seconds later, they also say, “We do not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers, our shareholders, or, most importantly, our associates.”  They even go so far as to make it company policy to report any suspicion of unionization. Here’s another quote from their training video: “The most obvious signs (of union organization) would include the use of words associated with unions or union-led movements like a living wage.”  Amazon also fired an employee of five years after leading a walk-out in New York in protest of alleged underreporting of COVID-19 infections to continue keeping people in the workplace even while infected. That was in March of this year, 2020.  Very controversial is Amazon’s facial recognition technology, which they aggressively try to sell various governments according to Forbes, and they previously advertised the product specifically for police bodycams. Not quite there yet, but it’s reminiscent of the 2002 movie “Minority Report” where police arrest people based on data they collect indicating the likelihood of committing a crime.  If you’ve heard about Amazon not paying taxes, the Tennessean reports that Amazon has collected over 1.5 billion dollars in government subsidies between 2000-2017, and they paid $0 in federal taxes both 2017 and 2018 after making a combined total of 16.6 billion dollars in profit.

Hey, what’s up, guys? This is Brand Breakdown, and I’m your host, Matt Young. Brand Breakdown is a show where we take a company, breakdown its brand perception, and paint a picture of how people came to perceive it that way. If you want us to review your brand, drop a comment or email me at matt@forwardvibe.com.

Today’s company is Red Bull. Their ENTIRE brand can be summarized in one word, “hype.” Red Bull doesn’t just sell energy drinks.


They own 37 sports teams and a record label

Remember “Sail” by Awolnation in 2014? Red Bull Records

In 2011, Red Bull sponsored Travis Pastrana’s no parachute skydive

In 2012, Red Bull sponsored Felix Baumgartner's Supersonic Space Jump

Their YouTube is full of extreme stunts like heliskiing


They were originally founded in Austria in 1987 where they created the energy drink market, and now they sell over 6 billion cans every year.

They started by going to college parties, libraries, coffee shops, and bars where men ages 18-35 congregated and handed out free cans of Red Bull. They still do this at many events today.

Speaking of events, Red Bull sponsors music festivals, film festivals, and more obscure activities like extreme cliff diving.

The whole goal of the Red Bull brand is to bring their tag line to life, “Red Bull gives you wings.”

You might be thinking to yourself, “What does any of this have to do with selling energy drinks?” That’s exactly the point. They sell their brand first and the product second.

Think about it: if you love what they do and what they stand for, you’ll buy Red Bull before you buy any other energy drink, and that’s why they dominate 43% of the market.

Of course, we have to look at what obstacles they had to overcome as well. In 2016, Red Bull paid out over $600,000 in settlement fees for a class-action lawsuit to people who actually thought that drinking Red Bull would give them literal wings.

Another scandal is when RB Leipzig (a soccer team financed by Red Bull) became known as the most hated club in the German league for their sneaky business tactics, notably getting around a rule which involves the fans owning over half of the team and tactically sweeping up the young German talent from the developmental league.

What makes Red Bull such a special company despite hiccups like these is its proficiency in media and branding. They consistently push the boundaries of what people perceive to be possible, and they keep themselves in the public eye.

Do you drink Red Bull? Why or why not? Drop a comment below.

If you like our content about branding, want us to review your brand, or want to work with us, please let us know in the comments or by emailing me at matt@forwardvibe.com. This has been Brand Breakdown with your host, Matt Young. Peace.