From Just Do It to Why Do It: What Nike’s Change Means for Independent Agency Owners

Nike’s iconic Just Do It has shifted to Why Do It, but what does that mean for independent agency owners? Shane and Tonya break down Nike’s pivot, the risks of fixing what isn’t broken, and why asking “why” may be the most important step in building an agency that’s truly yours. 

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Transcript

Announcer: [00:00:00] This is IA Forward your Playbook for Success as an independent insurance agent. Here to help you knock it outta the ballpark are your host, Shane Tatum and Tonya Lied.  

Tonya: Welcome to IA Forward. I wanna go back to our sports roots from when we started this podcast three years ago. Talk about the Nike slogan. 

Just Do It and the recent changes they've made and what that has to do with insurance.  

Shane: I love sports and I'm never gonna argue with you. If you would like to talk about sports, I don't care what kind of sports we're talking about. I'm a ball sport guy, so I love it when there's a ball involved, but there's lots of sports and there's lots of different things that have correctly been classified as sports. 

Now, I will use your dancing background to say if you've never danced, which I have never danced, but if you've never really put yourself in that spot. [00:01:00] Then you really don't understand how difficult it is, and it is a sport. Cheer is a sport. It doesn't have to be a ball sport, even though I am a ball sport guy. 

I think just to kind of level set there that, while I think we're gonna talk about some things with marketing and branding and slogans and all that, this does relate to the insurance industry because sales insurance agency owner is very aligned with the competitive background of sport. And that's why we did that. 

That's why we, we loved to talk about sports is because it's such a relational thing to our industry. Specifically independent agency ownership, independent agency sales. I mean, it's so relatable to competitive background.  

Tonya: I've never thought about it until the moment you were just speaking. So if you're into ball sports, and I'm a ballroom dancer, does that make ballroom dancing a ball sport? 

Shane: I understand your play on words, but [00:02:00] unless you're going to dance and juggle a ball,  

Tonya: my current professional dance partner's wife does an incredible showcase piece utilizing a ball that's really amazing that I should send to you.  

Shane: I would love to see it. I am expanding my mindset around sports, obviously. 

You're not required to have a ball involved, to have competition. It's just the nature of my background, how I grew up. I grew up playing team oriented ball sports, the major three from male athletes in the eighties and nineties, football, basketball, baseball. So I naturally gravitate there because that's what I do and that's how my brain is wired. 

But yeah, I, I think it's interesting how diverse and expanded the world of sports has become in general. I know we have the Olympics in Texas, the high school sports regulatory body. I mean, it [00:03:00] cheer fought for recognition as a UIL sport for decades and has now become a UIL sport in the state of Texas. 

So that's, you know, that's a big win for those that are competing regardless of what your perspective is. I love it because it expands something for the insurance industry that we need competitive people that have experience with competition to come into our industry like we, we need that. We need those competitive juices to come into the independent agency system, not just the exclusive agency system. 

That sets it up pretty well for the Nike change.  

Tonya: I just got finished reading the Boys in the Boat. Which was the award-winning film directed by George Clooney. Read the book recently and looking at the struggles and the teamwork and the psychological challenges, the physical challenge they overcame. 

Just a really [00:04:00] fantastic read.  

Shane: I've heard really good things about it. Both movie and book, not a ball sport.  

Tonya: But it's big sticks in boats.  

Shane: I get it.  

Tonya: And it's their version of football. Like seriously, like when you would have a hundred thousand people come to a college match, that's college football for us. 

Shane: There was a Rob Lowe film, Oxford Blues or Oxford something. Anyway, it was big rowing theme. I think it's that we have this incredible view across different continents, across global. Spectrum of different sports that draw such an in, in important group of people in terms of just the masses. And yeah, I just, I don't know. 

I just can Babylon for days about my love of sport.  

Tonya: Getting back to the Nike slogan change, my husband and I were watching a football game last weekend. A Nike ad comes on and I'm loving the ad, [00:05:00] and then at the very end of it, the screen flashes black, and in these big red block letters that are not the normal Nike font, it says, why do it? 

And it only flashed for probably maybe a quarter of a second. Very subliminal. I looked at the cute boy who is the most unobservant human being on the planet, which I think is one of the reasons that we are married. I asked him, did you see that? He's like, did I see what I said? The Nike that just popped up and it said, why do it? 

As opposed to just do it, and he's like, no, I didn't see that. So the rest of the night, I'm paying attention for another Nike commercial to come on, and it never did. The next day I am. Reading some marketing journals and I'm seeing everywhere, not about Nike's new slogan that has changed to why do it now. 

35 [00:06:00] years ago, Nike introduced, its iconic Just do it slogan, right? And the idea of why do it, they feel speaks to a younger generation who are hesitant to get out and do things. Because of a fear of perfectionism. Just do. It was very much targeted to you and I as Gen Xers, even into our millennials, but they're feeling as though Gen Z and Gen Alpha are not going to respond to just do it 35 years later. 

Shane: Cracker Barrel.  

Tonya: I'm very familiar with Cracker Barrel. Are we having  

Shane: another Cracker Barrel here? I've been thinking about this. You sent me this article a few days ago. The explanation is where I think maybe in this world of [00:07:00] information, it's communication. I'm a. Let's communicate. Let's get information out there. 

Let's talk about things, the perspective, all this stuff. I'm good with that. In your organization, like explaining to your team what your vision is, why you want to do something. Simon Sinek. Start with why. The question that I have is in this article that we're, that we're gonna reference, there's this deep ex explanation of a trying to attract to. 

This, you know, these next generations, the Gen Z, the Gen Alpha, and it's almost like they're just trying to explain why they're changing to why instead of the subtle change. I just feel like this is going to be, or maybe it has been overthought Cracker Barrel. You're messing with a nostalgia, you're messing with a [00:08:00] group across. 

Country, east Texas. Very familiar with this main street within the Nike spectrum. I think the better approach here, if you are going to make a change like this, 'cause it, it's subtle. You saw it on a flash and then you didn't see it again. So if you're going to do it subtly changing from just do it to why do it? 

Is it better to really explain it? Or is it better to just let it flow? To just mix it in. And I think that's the thing that I've been processing for a few days now, are we sometimes over communicating? Are we sometimes explaining things that don't need to be explained, like the Cracker Barrel comparison, which is probably not fair, and I'm gonna do that because I'm gonna have fun with it. 

The CEO tried to explain her way and justify it and just was totally missing the mark [00:09:00] with the customer base. You're gonna run off more people than you're going to attract new. Are they going to run off more people than they're going to attract new? That's always a consideration that has to take place when it comes to marketing, and I don't know that marketers as a whole think about that sometimes. 

I think a lot of times. A lot of marketers, certainly marketers with less experience. They're just thinking about being the next great thing, the next great campaign, almost like a self-serving concept in a way they're after the marketing awards, the marketing recognition instead of what drives sales, which I think is a key question that a mentor of mine has brought to my attention. 

Like what drives sales, what drives leads, what drives opportunities. Are we doing that when we're talking about our next marketing thing? Or are we just trying to have a fancy thing, [00:10:00] a cool slogan that relates to our independent agencies really well? Are we doing something that's gonna run off our existing customers in exchange for trying to find new customers? 

That's a real struggle within the marketing spectrum  

Tonya: as a recovering perfectionist. I was very intrigued by this idea because just do it for me was pretty perfect in having this discussion with the boy who really just wanted to watch the game at this point. But when you have that kind of big marketing change in the middle of a football game, my brain is split. 

'cause I'm trying to watch the game, but it wasn't a game that was extremely relevant to me. Like I'm watching it 'cause it's good football, but it's not directly affecting my world at the time. And it kind of made me go to this place of why do we make things harder on ourselves by trying something new or unfamiliar?[00:11:00]  

Why do we do it? Why would Nike take such a risky step and why would they take a chance on. Financial stability on that kind of 30, 30 5-year-old change. And then it got me thinking about this idea of winning. You and I as Gen Xers, we were taught, it's all about the win. It is all about winning. But now I am more of an idea that winning is relative to what you're trying to do in life. 

So I like the idea of why do it from a mental perspective. Is winning and greatness and potential what that means to you, or is it what it means to everyone? There's so many things about this that provoked thought in my brain, and [00:12:00] yes, I was probably one of 15 people. In the country during this game that went down this road. 

So I get it. But like you, I don't like the explanation because I found the explanation offensive to Gen Z and Gen Alpha.  

Shane: It assumes this anxious generation concept and these labels are not always true. Some journalist has. A bad experience with a millennial or a Gen Z writes an article and it catches fire and labels an entire generation incorrectly. 

And I think that I've spoken openly over the last year how I see Gen Z different than anxious. I don't see Gen Z as anxious. My experience with lots of Gen Z individuals is that, yes. There might be [00:13:00] some striving for perfection as athletes, and I'm talking Gen Z athletes here, but there's also this balanced understanding in most cases where. 

They're playing a game of failure. Maybe their sport is a sport of failure. Softball, baseball would be the first to come to my mind where you can succeed three outta 10 times and be successful when you're failing more than you're succeeding. That is a game of failure and a perfection mindset. Unlike a ballroom dance routine, a cheer routine is perfection. 

Perfection is going to. Be the goal because it can't be a game of failure. And Tanya knows more than anyone that one little, one little mistake in a what? Two minute, three minute,  

Tonya: four minute, 90 seconds to two minutes,  

Shane: 92nd routine. Okay. I was even longer than I needed to be, so a [00:14:00] 90 minute dance routine. 

One slight bobble mistake. That's a definite world of perfection. So like if we pick on Tanya and I do times about, Hey, I need you to not be a perfectionist. I need you to not worry about it. Done is better than perfect. All those sayings that I've said over the years, I'm talking from a perspective of baseball. 

Even if we went to football, a quarterback. With a completion percentage of 60, 65 percent's pretty dang good. There are competitions in this world that are considered sports and a dance routine, a cheer competition routine. You can't be in a game of failure when you're in those types of events. If that's your craft, then you are after this world of perfection. 

That is not the business world. You do have to go through a bit of recovery if you're coming out of that competition perfection world, into a business [00:15:00] entrepreneurial ownership world, to understand that failure's part of that game. And that's the part where I do not see what Nike sees. And the question is, I feel like the marketing world, just my perspective here, can be divided into two camps. 

There is the camp of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Okay. And then there is the second camp that I've heard throughout my life. If it ain't broke, break it. So I think there's two different views when it comes to what's going on in a business, what's going on in our independent agencies. To zero that back in to what we always talk about and come back to center with is Nike. 

Breaking something that's not broke. So they would fall in the if it ain't broke, break it, or is it a situation where they're creating a new problem with the idea that's gonna generate sales, that's gonna [00:16:00] generate an opportunity. These things don't come out without high level executive approval. There's definitely not a change of slogan from just do it to Why do it without CEO approval. 

At some point, maybe even board review. And so, you know, I doubt that the chief marketing officer, the highest level marketer within Nike, which is no slouch position, by the way, I doubt they're making this call in a vacuum, which means that the highest level of Nike is seeing this as a good direction. 

That's what's most interesting to me because I'm not a Nike follower. But do they have a problem? I don't know. I don't know that they have a problem or I don't know that they have a problem that they're trying to break. So they can grow. Like what drives someone to do that?  

Tonya: Yes, Nike is for [00:17:00] sure having revenue decline issues. 

Third quarter revenue decline is expected to be 11.5%, which is about $11 billion. They are having some financial challenges, but I am not sure an esoteric thought of slogan change is really the answer. And of course, they brought in some really big names for the launch of the new slogan, Tyler, the creator, Kaitlyn Clark, Carlos Alcatraz, I get all of the things they're trying to do. 

You were talking about that there's two things. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Or if it ain't broke, break it. To me, this seems almost like a third option that they were trying to have this [00:18:00] overarching spiritual, esoteric feel to it where it's more trying to have you think. Not that you have to go after greatness, but to think about what greatness means to you. 

I don't necessarily know if me thinking about what greatness means to me makes me buy Tennessee athletic apparel or golf clubs. I am in my upper forties, so I am not their target demographic  

Shane: and see this as this idea around. If you have revenue decline, you probably have some underlying business problem, right? 

Marketing isn't gonna be the savior. A business leader's misdirected thought is that, oh, let's bring in marketing to save us. They can save us, but we're not gonna really address our underlying problem, which is our shoe [00:19:00] designs are off track. Our apparel designs are off track. They don't feel good. The competition from the On Clouds of the world is fierce. 

I'm in my third pair of On Clouds, have not purchased a pair of Nikes in a while. Now some would say that's because you're an old man and that's okay. I'm fine with that. But the reality is that they have a shoe problem. There's not enough celebrity endorsements in the world to save that, the Jordan brand. 

And I know that someone smarter than me can. Explain it, but obviously Jordan is a subset of Nike, right? Has his own brand within the Nike realm. The Jordan brand is excelling, I believe, and I may be fact checked on that and that's okay. I'll admit I may be off a little bit, but I think that we've gone through this place where we goat 10 year olds because they get a hit in a little league game. 

We've reached this point [00:20:00] where we're overusing. The term goat to be goed means that the internet or social media has christened, whatever happened, whatever play, whatever game, whatever scenario as a goated event, we've lost that entire spectrum because it was basically this debate of LeBron James and Michael Jordan, or. 

Nolan Ryan versus whoever you want to compare him to in pitching Derek Jeter versus Cal Ripkin Jr. And there's all these kind of, who's the goat and now the incredible nature of social media. We use that term way too loosely, and we have this constant drive to. Become an influencer, right? That's what teenagers today, it's a very high percentage of what do you want to do with your life? 

What career do you want [00:21:00] to have? There's a lot of, I wanna become an influencer, right? And so there's a lot of this aspiration that makes you go, I understand why Nike is moving to why versus just do it. Why do it versus just do it. I can't understand the why behind the why. To make a little dad joke there, you know, what is the why behind changing to the why? 

And you kind of see this, and I think it's all wrapped up in this reality that we have to do more, but then we go so far as to complicate it. And I think that's the rule they've broken here, is if you have to explain it or feel the necessity. To give this huge ex explanation or in Cracker Barrel's case, send your CEO on a rebranding tour to talk about why it's gonna be so great. 

You've entered the realm of complication instead of keeping it simple. Simplicity is always going to win when it comes to marketing, [00:22:00] and I know that works for our independent agency over some complicated thing, Jordan's showing up in the NASCAR world, not necessarily making everybody happy there, but he's doing his thing. 

If I'm a Nike executive, I'm paying attention to Jordan. Brett, I'm looking at what's going on. What's the problem with our top line revenue growth? We're changing slogans. We're trying to find momentum. Yet we have this incredible example with the Jordan brand. We should understand what's happening there and see if we can apply some of those principles over here in our mainline business. 

That would be my first order of business if I was named the Nike CEO. Something's not working. What's not working? What is working? What is working is obviously the Jordan brand. Is there anything else within our Nike domain that is working? What is not working? I think that relates to our independent agencies extremely well. 

[00:23:00] We should be in a constant, what is working, what is not working. We should be in that constant review. I just want to caution you to sometimes take it a little slower. There's all this peer pressure. To grow as fast as your peers are talking about, they're growing to always make a change. Follow the shiny object that's gonna take your agency to a whole new level. 

One of our partners at the Integra Partner Network is a virtual assistant company IE blueprint. I saw a post by their founder, Bo Pilgrim the other day. That made a lot of sense, like, how do you scale, you scale your business one. Virtual assistant at a time. That was their kind of statement on that. Very simple post, but that's true if you're gonna scale using virtual assistants. 

I'm not advocating one way or another there, I'm just saying if that's gonna be your plan, if you're gonna scale through virtual assistants, you [00:24:00] don't scale five virtual assistants at a time because you don't have the processes and you don't have. The time for that, you scale one virtual assistant at a time. 

Congrats to Beau and his team for coming up with that. If you're going to introduce AI into your agency, you don't introduce 10 AI concepts. You don't introduce 10 AI agents into your process. You introduce one. You stay simple. You go one at a time. I think that is. The issue that we have to constantly think about here, and a lot of times in our agencies, we unfortunately kind of do the Nike thing where I'm not really sure that we've thought about what we're going to disrupt and how disruptive is it going to be when we make a change. 

I'll a testimonial here from inside the Integra world, we have [00:25:00] recently made a change in our retail operation within personal lines. To go back to something that we changed four or five months ago, we figured out that it wasn't working, that it was sort of a accidental, threw the baby out with the bath water concept and you know, we kind of tucked our tail and come back and said, okay, here we go. 

We gotta make this adjustment. Right. Managing director on the podcast to talk about this change. Last week we ripped it apart. We went back to what had worked before and figured out. We actually had it right before, but we had one specific area of the process that was not good, that was broken. And rather than just address that small area, we address the entire personal line spectrum. 

We threw the baby out with the bath water. That's my concern here. With Nike. If they're [00:26:00] going to introduce why do it and not retire, just do it. I can get on board with that. If they're going to replace, just do it with why do it? That's where I get a concern. Is this really the right strategy? Are they throwing the baby out with the bath water? 

Are they running away from a core market that's brought them to their current place? And trying to chase a new market in panic mode. That's the question. If I was consulting, they hired me and Tanya to come in. We're available to fix this for them. I would say, okay, Tanya, we need to see if they've thrown the baby out with the bath water here  

Tonya: from a different perspective. 

I love the idea of starting an independent agency because building something of your own is worth it. Independence isn't easy. It is difficult to leave the comfort of a captive carrier. It is difficult [00:27:00] to leave a really great job where you are a top producer in making an excellent living for your family. 

It is hard to become independent in the middle of a hard market. So why would you risk everything to start something from scratch? Because it's yours.  

Shane: Why do it would fit us a whole lot better than it would fit Nike? In my opinion, we are in the business of helping agents, partnering with agents and starting new independent agencies. 

That is what the Integra Partner Network does. That is why we named the podcast I a Forward. We want you to think about the independent agency system going forward. It's all connected, and I agree. 100% that there is an easy why when it comes to why start an independent agency break where you're at, assuming you're in a producing non-equity [00:28:00] role, non ownership role, you're in a. 

EE exclusive agency role, and you're generating something for someone else. You're in this world where you're not necessarily building your own asset. I've seen some things on social media about not everyone being cut out to be an agency owner. I think my view, maybe it's bias view, that's fine. I don't care. 

I think the world of agency networks today, us being one. Allows for the producing mindset to become an agency owner a whole lot easier and with a better perspective of how to do it and have help than was available 15, 20 years ago. I feel like there's this deal of should a producer ever leave and start their own agency or should they just stay where they are? 

And that's where that question has been surfacing around social media. [00:29:00] Circles that I follow, I 100% believe that anybody that is a really good producer, if you've got lead generation, you've got sales capability you're producing, then you absolutely have the ability to become an agency owner. That's how I feel about it. 

Personal lines, commercial lines, et cetera. I think that is the reality. The very large independent agencies, obviously they are not gonna love that statement. They wanna bring their producers along. The smart ones are kind of running themselves like law firms. Where they allow for partnership status, maybe buy-ins to partnership status. 

If you're getting that as a producer or you're in an organization that allows that, then okay, that's a pretty good spot. But if you're in an agency or a situation where that is not on the table for you with existing agency ownership, [00:30:00] whether it's exclusive of agency, whether it's independent agency, well then what are you doing? 

What. If you're a good producer, if you're a good salesperson, if you're average, maybe the best place is to stay where you're at. But if you're a good salesperson and you're doing well, why aren't you building that asset for yourself? That is the nature of the independent agency system. You can build that asset for yourself, build a family legacy, and or sell. 

Right. I mean, if you wanna sell it down the road, that's fine too. And so, yeah, I think Tanya is a hundred percent right on this. It is 100% connected to the why. Why wouldn't you build an independent agency for yourself?  

Tonya: I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Tony Gaskins. If you don't build your dream, someone will hire you to build theirs. 

Shane: Attitude's a choice. Make a great one.  

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