Nike is slowly but surely showing all marketers online and offline how to combine the new school and oldschool advertising tactics to create devestating effects. Take their most recent example, the Lebron IV sneaker release. To all those that are not sneakerheads Lebron’s shoes are a lot like the Air Jordans of the past. So for those not lucky to ride the Air Jordan sneaker industry (now a 26 billion dollar industry) copping a pair of the Lebron sneakers is their second chance.  And Nike knows this.  So how is this relevent to Web 2.0 and online advertising?  Take a good look at the sneaker to the left, have you ever seen it on TV in and ad?  I haven’t.  Have you ever seen it in a magazine?  Nope.  Nike spent about $0 advertising this particular sneaker and if you happened to go to the secret locations that they were selling it at you saw HUGE lines where people had been waiting for hours upon hours.  So how did they do it?

1.  Nike used their early adopter audience by posting all information about this sneaker on their inside.nikebasketball blog.

2.  This sneaker audience then posted on their sneaker news blogs and started the trickle down effect to the point where you saw Moms, Dads, and not just avid sneaker fans waiting in line to get a pair of these Lebron IV’s.  You can see pictures of the lines on the criticalsole.com site.
So with all the huss fuss about Pay Per Post and how to be Viral we should all take a page from the Nike marketing braintrust.  Paying for bloggers to post information about a product can work but for it to be lightning it has to hit the audience just right.  So if you’re paying for people to post then I’d look long and hard at which blog you’re on.  Lesson learned, viral is not by accident but by hard thought work.  If you’re not completed convinced do a google search on how myspace was founded.

More info on the Nike Scavenger Hunt marketing campaign.

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