My dear students | The movie Air and its take on marketing, branding

Today I want to talk to you about the movie Air, the movie about Michael Jordan’s relationship with Nike. On the Rotten Tomatoes site, it has a 92% approval rating (meaning most film critics loved it), so it must have done something right. But I must confess that when I began watching the movie, I immediately felt a bit disjointed. Is this a movie about sports? Is it about marketing? Is it about both? If both, why is it supposed to be interesting? I do not mean to say it wasn’t interesting. Quite the contrary; it was gripping enough for me to miss watching the IPL finals.

Air is about a marketing manager at Nike persuading Jordan’s family to front Nike’s shoe offerings. Nike offered a deal to Jordan: they will market the ‘Air Jordan’ shoe. Jordan and Nike won’t merely have a sponsorship agreement; they will instead be joined at the hip with Jordan receiving a share of the revenues from Air Jordan’s sales. The Air Jordan made several hundred million dollars for both Nike and Jordan and enhanced the value of both brands, brand Nike and brand Jordan. Why does the world need to know this story and pay to watch it? Well, although Air is about events that happened in 1984, it is a precursor to how the world was going to shape up in the years to come, and you people will bear the brunt of it.

Air’s tone is upbeat and optimistic. Yet, somewhere between the hoops and the hoopla, there are some provocations that make Air linger longer than the usual summer fare. Most of us are apt to look at excellence as a good in itself. It takes years to develop professional skills, whether it be in medicine, engineering, law or journalism, and involves a huge amount of effort, luck and perseverance. What this movie is telling me and you is even this is not enough. We need to be smarter than just being smart. We need to market ourselves well, for the system maximises rewards only when perspiration and perception are combined together.

Unfortunately, there is no linear relationship between perspiration and perception. Hard work alone, whatever might be its volume, may not be proportionately related to perception. Perspiration can make things happen. But to really make things happen, and for your work, your relationships and your career to razzle and dazzle, perception has to do its work, or rather you will have to manage perceptions.

I find the whole idea of managing perceptions ridiculous. But Air’s underlying — if understated premise — is that the perception of excellence is so mixed up with the fact of excellence that one feeds the other in a magnificent loop. Michael Jordan was a great player but he became a once in a generation immortal player when he teamed up with Nike to manage not merely his endorsements but his entire persona. The man and the shoe turned each other into a phenomenon. The media hype and the endorsements were as much a part of the Jordan persona as his prowess in basketball. This was in 1984. In 2023, the perspiration-perception co-dependence is, if anything, even more pronounced.

One might argue that this is about celebrities; the rest of us don’t have to worry about perceptions. Well, you and I both know that’s not true. Air is just an extreme example of what has become pretty pedestrian now, which is that our ecosystem is dependent on perceptions on a scale that has not been the case before. Our social media exacerbates it and our metrics of success, that focus inordinately on numbers and ticking the boxes, vindicate the critical role of perceptions.

Can we do something about it? Here’s where I differ from Air’s general approach of glorifying the role of managing perceptions. Not every problem has a solution. Even worse, solving a problem that’s best left alone might worsen the problem. Even if perceptions are important, these are one of those things that one messes up the more one thinks of them. It’s best I think to leave perceptions to perceptions. Focus on enjoying your work. Yes your work won’t speak for itself in today’s world but so what? The more you try speaking for your work the more the probability that your work will suffer. Try to find solace in your work. You may not get a shoe named after you but that’s nothing to worry about.