K. Joia Houheneka is a global leader in luxury entrepreneurship. She is the founder of Club Elevate+Aspire+, an application-only exclusive community for entrepreneurs building high-end, premium, and/or luxury businesses.
Nike’s provocative new “Winning Isn’t for Everyone | Am I a Bad Person” campaign raises critical questions about what greatness requires.
“I have a saying, ‘Luxury ought to be for anyone. But it probably won’t ever be for everyone. Though I hope someday it will.’ The realist in me recognizes that excellence entails self-discipline and the choice to take on hard things. And so many people are just content to coast. But the optimist in me envisions a day when everyone rises to reach toward their potential.” – (From “Quotes on Luxury” by K. Joia Houheneka)
On July 19, Nike debuted its latest campaign, “Winning Isn’t for Everyone.” If you’ve watched any of the televised 2024 Summer Olympics from Paris, you’ve most likely seen a version of it.
The full version – which in accordance with a luxury marketing strategy is more than a commercial and is actually considered a short 90-second film – is narrated by William Dafoe (evoking his iconic portrayal of the villainous Green Goblin in the Spiderman films) and features legendary world-class athletes such as LeBron James, Sha’Carri Richardson, Kobe Bryant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kylian Mbappé, Serena Williams, Qinwen Zheng, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Cristiano Ronaldo, and A’ja Wilson among others.
Here’s the transcript of the short film:
Am I a bad person?
Tell me. Am I?
I'm single-minded.
I'm deceptive.
I'm obsessive.
I'm selfish.
Does that make me a bad person?
Am I a bad person?
Am I?
I have no empathy.
I don't respect you.
I'm never satisfied.
I have an obsession with power.
I'm irrational.
I have zero remorse.
I have no sense of compassion.
I'm delusional. I'm maniacal.
You think I'm a bad person?
Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Am I?
I think I'm better than everyone else.
I want to take what's yours and never give it back.
What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine.
Am I a bad person?
Tell me. Am I?
Does that make me a bad person?
Tell me. Does it?
According to Nike’s Chief Marketing Officer, Nicole Graham, this campaign is, “…a story about what it takes to be the best. The legacies that have yet to be shaped. And the dreams that will be made real. It reminds the world that there's nothing wrong with wanting to win… ‘Winning Isn’t for Everyone’ shows that anyone can be a winner, if they are willing to do what it takes.”
The question is: Is this what winning really takes?
What does it take to be the best – in sports and beyond?
What Nike gets somewhat right about the achievement of greatness
If the purpose of marketing is to create buzz around your brand, Nike has certainly succeeded in provoking a response among viewers. But it’s not clear if all publicity is actually good publicity.
I do believe Nike’s campaign does get some things right about greatness. And one of the most important is the unapologetic attitude toward winning, an attitude that demonstrates courage in a culture that too often coddles a victim mentality or lauds a policy of participation trophies for everyone (even for those kids who only showed up because their parents made them, who constantly just complained and made excuses, who never actually made a genuine effort to do their best).
Here is more of what I do believe the Nike campaign gets somewhat right:
Single-minded, focused obsession
First let me say, I believe all human beings are complex and multi-faceted, and we all should aspire to self-actualize a multi-passionate, multi-potentiate Renaissance Human ideal. However, the best way to actually do so is through periods of single-minded focus that amount to healthy obsession.
One of our mantras from The Flow Research Collective is that “Flow Follows Focus,” and as an Excellence Coach, my work includes supporting clients in creating conditions for hyper-focus so that they can access a flow state in order to achieve their radically ambitious goals.
“Selfishness”
Self-esteem is one of the basic human needs. As human beings, we are simultaneously the most social and the most individual of all organisms, and we do thrive when we make sure to prioritize self-care, healthy boundaries, building a virtuous character, and living an ambitious life of mission-driven excellence – this involves a focus on what you might call self-regard or “selfishness”.
When you set the ambitious intention to achieve something no has ever done before, in that sense you do aim to be better than everyone. You live in accordance with your highest values, your intuition, your judgment of what’s good and best. You are fueled by your mission – but to be worthwhile that mission must be something greater than you, so that it simultaneously elevates you and transcends you. As I’ve noted in a previous article, paradoxically self-actualization and self-transcendence turn out to be one and the same.
Infinite quest for more
The pursuit of excellence involves many such seeming paradoxes. Another of these is the paradox of happiness, which is that you must be simultaneously satisfied and dissatisfied – you must be filled with gratitude for all the beauty and bounty of the present moment, and you must be simultaneously hungry and driven to keep growing into the future.
Life is growth or decay. Those who live best never feel they have experienced or achieved “enough”.
“Mania” (Bordering on delusion)
When you set out to be world-class, by definition you are committing yourself to what the rest of the world deems to be impossible. There’s a kind of mania in high standards that push against what people generally regard as achievable.
Perhaps the most salient example of this in recent history is Steve Jobs who, as his biographer Walter Isaacson observed, leveraged a “reality distortion field” to convince himself and others that what seemed impossible could be accomplished.
Desire for “power”
“Power” is one of those tricky, perilous words in the English language. On the one hand, there is a morally good meaning of power that is often captured in the sense of being “empowered”. This is the power concomitant with self-esteem, with being truly worthy and capable. It is the power that comes from skills and the capacity to do worthwhile things. In addition to the physical prowess that empowers athletes to perform stunning feats of strength, speed, accuracy, and grace, we talk about the power of kindness, the power of silence, the power of teamwork, the power of love, etc.
However, there is another meaning of “power” that involves “power over others” and suggests reprehensible acts of coercion, manipulation, dishonesty, even violence. This is why the Nike campaign is also recklessly, dangerously problematic…
What Nike gets disastrously wrong about what greatness entails
Nike botched an opportunity to inspire and elevate the world’s thinking about greatness. Interestingly, the campaign points out that winning is for outliers, and perhaps some people assume that if you’re an outlier you’re automatically a bad person, a stance Nike could have provocatively and I believe correctly challenged. (As I noted in another Brainz piece, everyone in fact has a need for both belonging and being an outlier).
I keep thinking how much more powerful and truly inspiring the campaign would be if they had swapped William Dafoe for one of the three movie actors who recently portrayed Peter Parker/Spiderman, a character famous for learning about the great connection between power and responsibility.
Perhaps it’s no surprise given Nike’s history that moral edification is not in their wheelhouse. But I wonder and rue how much they might tarnish through association the legacies of athletes who have demonstrated greater character both on and off the field.
Here’s what the Nike campaign crucially misses about true excellence
A Civilized Outlet for Aggression: Why Sporting Competitions are Crucial for a Thriving Human Society
First, I want to make clear why I think sports are so important for society. It has to do with what is perhaps the most important distinction to make regarding human relations: Creator-Trader vs. predator-prey.
Let’s start by acknowledging that, like all other animals, we humans are predators that prey off of other living organisms to survive (and must avoid becoming prey to others: tigers, sharks, bacteria, etc.). Life competes with life – to the death – for the limited resources of any given environment, and you yourself are one such resource that may be violently ripped apart to be used, with perhaps only your family/tribe there to save you. Nature is, as Tennyson noted, red in tooth and claw.
But human nature is curiously something else. It turns out, humanity fares best when we don’t treat each other as predator and prey, but instead as Creators and Traders, This is when we utilize our problem-solving abilities to discover and create more resources (baking more pies instead of fighting over a piece) and exchanging to mutual advantage. It’s building win-win relationships instead of win-lose.
Ancient sages codified this wisdom in principles like the golden rule to treat others as you would be treated as well as commandments against killing, stealing, raping, etc. In more modern times, we’ve come to see the importance of grounding law and social order on the recognition of every person’s right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness – the pursuit of the creation of value and mutual exchange of value.
Sadly, the way of the Creator-Trader has yet to be consistently upheld by any society; predator-prey is always the default and has been the dominant mode for most human societies. However, the more we reject the predator-prey way of interacting with other humans and embrace the Creator-Trader ethos, the more we provide potential growing abundance for all. You might call this: becoming ever more civilized.
(After all, the opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s trade)
Now: Sports matter because they provide an outlet for the aggression of our predator-prey nature within the context of a civilized, Creator-Trader social system. We construct the artifice of a win-lose situation and it’s literally just a game (one with rules to help prevent any player from actually getting killed or seriously injured) – but the athletes have to train to the peak of their physical capacities, and “leave everything out on the field”, and even as spectators we can experience catharsis through identification with our tribe (i.e. team).
And at the end of the day, everyone shakes hands. Everyone can bond over their respect for the game and for the impressive skills that are required to excel within the rules. Rival teammates may even be friends off the field. This matters.
Abundance mindset
Another way to think of the above is the distinction between an abundance mindset vs. a scarcity mindset. An abundance mindset is the view that there can be wealth, happiness, and success for all, that resources aren’t finite and limited. For human beings, this is true, because we are the species that creates ever more resources and builds our own environments. Abundance is about forging human relations that are positive-sum, not zero-sum.
Sports are a way of getting to play a zero-sum game for fun within an overarching positive-sum abundance social context. Significantly, competition within an overall collaborative context can bring out the best in people. Anger (if well-controlled and well-channeled) and/or the drive to prove oneself can push people to reach a level of performance they might not otherwise achieve.
Interestingly, many of the world’s most celebrated achievers create alter egos or personas to drive their high-level performance. Just as Beyoncé is known for her on-stage persona Sasha Fierce, athletes like New York Yankees superstar Aaron Judge have confessed to an on-field vs. off-field personality. Sometimes what it takes to compete in the moment isn’t who you are or would ever want to be during the rest of “normal” life.
However, for many athletes, focusing on the competition is just a distraction, just noise that could drown out the signal that’s required for success, if you let it. For example, on a recent podcast, former Olympian Nastia Liukin spoke about her need to keep her attention on the things she could control. And other people are, by definition, outside of your control. Instead, it’s about running your own race, swimming your own lane, making yourself proud. “Stop trying to beat everybody else. Just be the best you that you can be.”
Again, sports might be zero-sum. In that very limited context, an Olympian might think regarding the previous champion holding the gold medal: “I want to take what’s yours and never give it back”. But it’s certainly NOT the way to win in life, society, and human relations overall. It might not even be useful in the context of playing the game to your own best ability.
Respect for others’ achievements and empathy for the pursuit
The old proverb may say, “All’s fair in love and war,” but sports are emphatically NOT war. Sports are all about demonstrating mastery according to rules, rules which not only level a playing field so that it is talent that shines, but which also encourage respect toward all other competitors playing fairly. “To be a good sport” is to be someone kind, generous, and gracious in earned defeat.
Significantly, certain academic research suggests that “empathy” can be beneficial for athletes to develop. As researchers Sevdalis and Raab observe, “Empathy, as a means of embodying another individual's states, may be particularly potent in situations that involve the trained human body in motion.” Not only may empathy help one learn from other athletes who have excelled in one’s chosen sport, in a contact sport it might help an athlete quickly assess, understand, and navigate an opponent.
Beyond sports, empathy clearly matters, not only to be a contributing member of society, but for personal health benefits such as reducing stress and preventing burnout. So many world-class athletes find meaning outside and beyond their sports careers in contribution and compassionate philanthropy. In fact, several of the athletes prominently featured in the “Am I Bad Person?” Nike film are – in spite of what the monologue and imagery suggest – well-known for giving their money, time, influence, and support to good causes.
Inspiration for childhood and beyond
I vividly remember summers of my childhood spent enthralled by the Olympic games. Although sports were never a personal passion (even today my preferred physical fitness activity is Pilates), every four years, I was mesmerized by the stories and feats of the athletes. Their drive, determination, and resilience were inspiration for my own ambitious challenges. They were a living ideal for what it takes to triumph.
Now, I’m the mother of an almost-two-year-old, and though this year he was too young to understand Mama cheering in front of the television, it is my hope that when the Summer Olympics return in 2028, we can experience the inspiration together. I hope he too will create fond childhood memories that can fuel an adulthood devoted to achieving greatness.
I hope he will understand that a life of excellence involves willfully taking on hard challenges. That he will make a decision to do something extraordinary. That he will take action, repeatedly, learning from mistakes while never losing sight of his North Star vision. That he will build greatness into his character through virtues such as curiosity, purpose, integrity, adaptability, justice, and generosity. That he will work to self-actualize and self-transcend.
It’s not what Nike suggests. But it is what true greatness entails.
Is Winning for You?
Are you committed to excellence?
Are you committed to being not only good but great, a truly great person?
Tell me. Are you?
I take a stand for greatness and what it takes to win in entrepreneurship and in life.
Do you?
This is a movement.
We are the unapologetically ambitious.
We are visionary
We are focused.
We take action.
When we fall, we rise again.
And rise higher.
We create, with an aim toward the highest levels of creativity and excellence.
We uphold demanding standards and refuse to settle.
We take a stand against the status quo and the mediocre.
Not in our stratosphere.
We admire the greatness we can find in others, and we want to achieve our own unqiue versions of it too.
We revel in self-responsibility and freedom.
Living life by design.
Independent, yet connected through shared values and aspirations.
Leaders among leaders.
Self-actualizing and self-transcendent.
Of substance and style.
Confident in curiosity.
Empathetic and rational.
The compassion of high standards.
Making better lives for ourselves and for others.
We revel in today with a hunger for tomorrow.
Do you?
Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Do you?
Will you leave a legacy of greatness?
(PS: Because I couldn’t find what I wanted, I’ve put together my own curated club just for individuals serious about excellence and building high-end, premium, and luxury-level brands. This is Club Elevate+Aspire+. If your brand is excellence, we invite you to apply today to join us.)
K. Joia Houheneka, Luxury Travel Advisor & Excellence Coach
K. Joia Houheneka is on a mission to Elevate Luxury to make luxury synonymous with excellence. She has a background as the owner of a luxury travel agency, Delve Travel. However, much of her current work involves coaching entrepreneurs in her bespoke method that combines luxury business strategy, training in flow states & self-actualization, and growth-focused travel – it is designed for those who are serious about achieving excellence and flourishing across all areas of life. Entrepreneurs with high-end, premium, or luxury businesses are invited to apply for a Complementary Level membership to Club Elevate+Aspire+ to discover more.
