Ambush marketing. The one thing the official sponsors were trying to avoid, with all the talk of 'brand police' at the turnstiles. And yet, the Gold Medal of Ambush Marketing goes to Nike for their bright yellow-green running shoes. They were one of the most prominent non-sponsors of the Olympics - and yet Nike managed to hi-jack the greatest show on earth with their amazing neon 'Volt' shoes.
Over 400 athletes wore Nike Volts in competition at the London Olympics and of those 400, 68 athletes won Olympic medals, including 25 gold medals
The man behind the Volt Shoe is Martin Lotti, Nike's global creative director for the Olympics . An industrial designer by education, he has been at Nike for 15 years. Painting Nike's Flyknit shoe Volt in that vivid way , was, he says, his way of creating a kind of "Team Nike."
Previously, the brand had matched the colour of the shoe to the color of the individual athlete's uniforms. Although the problem with that is that it blended in. This year, hundreds of athletes from different countries wore the same vivid colour
Nike used their own marketing assets (their shoes) - that belonged to them alone, and this gave this gave them a unique opportunity to take advantage of the Olympic rules.
Focus groups of amateur, college and professional athletes had been shown the shoe in different colours and, across the board, everybody loved the Volt, Lotti revealed .
There's a scientific reason for that. "It's the most-visible colour to the human eye." said Lotti.
Read the full background story here
And for more on the running shoe itself...here
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