Nike used to be the world’s most intimidatingly impressive brand. From product design to marketing, it could do no wrong.

Hipsters loved Nike. Scallies loved Nike. Your mum loved Nike. Much like Apple, Nike seemed to have perfected the art of appealing to everyone.

But for the last few years, Nike has been looking very wobbly indeed. What was once unthinkable is now undeniable: the brand’s confidence and cachet are failing.

Now, to be clear: Nike isn’t exactly in danger of calling in the receivers. But after years of mega-growth, its numbers are now trending downwards. In 2025, revenue dropped by 10% to $46.3 billion. Profits plummeted by 44%. DTC digital sales – the company’s supposed future – collapsed by 26% in Q4 2024. That same quarter, Nike’s stock hit its lowest price since 2018, wiping out $70 billion in market value. 

The company’s commercial woes can be traced to its creative and cultural decline. Nike stopped innovating, and relied on endlessly reissuing tried-and-tested hits like the Jordan 1. Quality deteriorated while prices rose. Prestigious collaborators departed for other brands. And the sneakerhead community that Nike helped create started looking elsewhere for its fix of fresh ideas.

Nike founder Phil Knight once said, “Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool.” Somewhere along the way, the company seems to have forgotten that.

So what lessons can B2B marketers take from the world’s biggest sports brand losing its edge?

1. Don’t let your greatest hits take up the whole setlist

Nike’s most iconic product designs are, in clothing terms, ‘vintage’. (A nice way of saying old.)

The Air Force 1 was released in 1982. The Air Max 1 arrived in 1986. The Air Jordan 1 was launched back in 1984, and Michael Jordan himself has retired three times since then – most recently in 2003, almost 23 years ago.

Reissuing these classic cultural artefacts, over and over and over again, was an incredibly effective tactic for years. Every time that iconic photo of Jordan flying through the air at the 1987 NBA Slam Dunk Contest got wheeled out by Nike’s marketing department again, buyers would feel the buzz and buy the latest version of the exact same shoes. 

But eventually, diminishing returns set in. The buzz started to fade. Products felt safe, stale and samey.

We see the same thing in B2B marketing all the time. A brand hits on a winning formula, so it becomes the template for everything. A standout case study gets driven into the ground. A popular social post is endlessly replicated. Product launches are shaped by previous launches, rather than the products themselves. 

Cut-and-pasting works… until it doesn’t.

It’s not that you need a constant stream of newness to stay in the game. But a good B2B brand protects its best work by not flogging it to death. Keep those classics – they’re what your business is built on. Just make sure they’re mixed in with some less predictable, more original stuff.

2. Value your nerds 

In 2020, Nike made the fateful decision of eliminating its category-based organisation structure.

For decades, Nike had organised its products and marketing around specific sports – basketball, running, football – with dedicated teams who possessed deep, nerdy expertise in each discipline. But the company’s leadership decided this was wasteful duplication, and squished every category into a gender-based product engine: men’s, women’s and kids’ lines.

Nike fired hundreds of experienced employees, losing vast amounts of expertise and deep relationships within sport communities. Without dedicated teams who understood the nuances of running trends or football culture, Nike’s products – and the marketing of them – became less relevant to both athletes and sports fans.

In B2B, how often do brands blindly chase efficiency at the expense of the specialised knowledge that makes them credible? In 2026, B2B buyers expect the same level of relevance and personalisation as B2C customers. Yet 89% of B2B organisations still only do basic personalisation, such as inserting a name in an email (source: CMI).

Real expertise – the kind that comes from truly understanding your customers’ technical challenges, industry pressures and operational realities – is invaluable.

That facilities manager evaluating your partition systems doesn’t want generic, one-size-fits-all content. They want proof you understand live-environment protection in data centres specifically. And they don’t want to spend ages searching out that proof.

Nike lost running credibility to Hoka and On because it stopped having dedicated experts who lived and breathed running culture. Don’t make the same mistake by flattening your expertise in pursuit of cost-cutting and operational tidiness.

3. True thought leadership = not playing it safe

Between 2020 and 2024, under CEO John Donahoe, Nike became increasingly risk-averse. Rather than developing breakthrough products, the company relied on reissuing classics in endless colorways. Sales charts and data-driven insights replaced creative risk-taking.

The problem is that data can only tell you what worked yesterday. It can’t reveal what athletes and customers will want and need tomorrow.

According to a 2026 report from CMI, nearly every B2B marketer (96%) says their organisation creates thought leadership content. But, let’s be honest, the vast majority of that content isn’t particularly thoughtful or leader-like. It’s safe, data-blinded, and shaped by the past, not the future.

White papers that regurgitate industry consensus. Blog posts optimised for keywords but lacking any real insight. Social posts that seem boldly opinionated, but actually fence-sit and hedge-bet so hard that they say nothing at all.

Actual thought leadership requires being brave enough to challenge conventional wisdom. Data still has a key role to play – decision-makers need research-backed insights – but honest-to-god instinct and opinion are what make you a leader.

As one US marketing strategist puts it: “[In 2026], the most successful B2B brands will stand for something, take positions and create work that makes audiences feel something inside. Because in the age of accelerating sameness, the greatest risk in B2B is being forgettable.”

Nike’s creative decline shows what happens when you let data override human thinking. Don’t confuse a dashboard of ‘insights’ with actual insight. The B2B brands that win are those brave enough to have a point of view (even if it’s initially a bit squirmy and uncomfortable).

Playing it safe is more dangerous than it looks.

4. Going it alone is probably a bad idea

Nike’s Consumer Direct Acceleration strategy dramatically cut back its wholesale relationships, slashing the number of shops it sold products to by more than two-thirds. Senior management believed they could cut out the middlemen entirely, and brand loyalty would send customers to Nike.com when they couldn’t find its products on shelves.

Nike would get to completely control how its products were presented to buyers. (Plus it’d get to keep 100% of the profits.)

That backfired, and rapidly. Nike abandoning brick-and-mortar retailers created new opportunities for competitors. Foot Locker, which derived 75% of its revenue from Nike in 2020, simply diversified. The retailer filled the gaps with products from Hoka and On Running. Hoka’s sales surged by 27.9%; On Running reported 32.3% growth.

And the specialist sports stores that Nike exited became showcases for competitors who understood that retail partnerships aren’t just about distribution, they’re also about marketing – because these shops are powerful influencers within their local communities.

In B2B marketing, your distribution partners aren’t retailers. Your equivalent of specialist running stores are industry analysts, trade publications, consultancies and technology partners.

These partners don’t just distribute your message wider. They also lend it weight it wouldn’t otherwise have.

Think about how buying decisions actually happen. A prospect researching roofing systems doesn’t just read your case studies. They read what Gartner says about the category. They check what Construction News wrote about industry trends. They ask their consultant which suppliers know their stuff. When those trusted third parties mention you – or better yet, endorse you – it carries infinitely more credibility than anything you could say about yourself.

Data backs this up. According to IDC research, 91% of B2B marketers say independent, analyst-led content is the key to winning new business at events. What you say is important, but if you really want it to land you need independent voices to validate it.

When you pull back from these relationships – perhaps because you’re prioritising ‘owned’ channels where you 100% control the messaging – you’re not just losing reach. You’re losing the credibility you earn when a respected voice vouches for you. And you’re losing the chance of a prospect finding you through a source they already trust.

Whoever your hungriest competitors are – your equivalent of Hoka and On – will swoop in to fill the gaps you’ve left behind. 

Plus: third-party opinions matter more, not less, in our increasingly AI-driven world. Embedding your brand in trusted sources is crucial for visibility in AI-generated responses. When ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude summarises “best practices in [your sector here]”, it pulls from authoritative publications and research reports – not your company website.

Earned PR and thought-leadership mentions aren’t just good for reputation; they directly impact whether or not AI tools will acknowledge your existence.

Back to Nike: the company is now scrambling to rebuild wholesale partnerships after years of aggressive neglect. Don’t make that same expensive mistake. Your industry’s ‘specialist shops’ – i.e. wherever credible expertise congregates – deserve care and cultivation.

So in summary, then…

Nike’s struggles offer fascinating lessons to B2B marketers, and demonstrate that even the strongest brands can lose their way when they forget what made them great. Nike swapped creativity, innovation and cultural authenticity for operational efficiency, digital optimisation and purely data-driven decision-making. And it cost them billions.

Chances are, your B2B brand doesn’t operate at the scale Nike does. But you probably face similar pressures: efficiency mandates, demands for measurable ROI, AI tools promising to automate every process…

The lesson isn’t to reject these things, but to ensure they don’t mess with your brand’s core strengths. Your true competitive advantage comes from deep expertise in your customers’ world; genuine relationships with the communities that matter; and the courage to take creative risks that data can’t validate in advance.

Because as Nike is now learning the hard way, your brand’s stature, once damaged, is difficult to rebuild.

Looking to give your B2B brand a Nike-back-in-the-noughties competitive edge? Let’s talk.