I recently watched the movie AIR. It retraces the story of how Sonny Vaccaro and Nike pursued the basketball rookie Michael Jordan to make him sign a partnership with Nike, which eventually revolutionized the world of sports and contemporary culture.
There’s a scene where the entire Nike team is with Michael Jordan and his family in a meeting room to decide if they’re all going to collaborate or not. In the scene, Sonny delivers a 2min long speech to convince Michael Jordan to sign with Nike and not Adidas. At some point, he looks at Jordan straight in the eyes and says:
“A shoe is just a shoe until somebody steps into it. Then it has meaning. We need you in these shoes not so you have meaning in your life, but so that we have meaning in ours.”
I think what really makes this one resonate is that it captures the essence of what it means to belong. We rarely buy a product only for its own sake, but for the shared understanding there is between us and what this product represents.
At some point, we create a picture in our mind of what this product will make us become, and we do whatever it takes to fulfill this vision. Without meaning, a product is a commodity. With one, it becomes irreplaceable. In consumers’ mind, the price of things is not necessarily related to their actual cost, but to their intangible, symbolic value.
We’re buying products to solve problems, sure, but before anything else, to belong.
