ACG

How Nike Is Rebuilding Itself Without the Swoosh.

You would have been hard pressed to work within marketing, sports or the outdoors industry and have not seen the current brand focus that Nike are throwing behind ACG. It’s been nothing short of a masterclass and for that we have to give the team the flowers.

It started slowly with subtle tweaks to the more observant viewers of us out there with Nike Trail slowly disappearing and many styles that work for Trail running getting rebranded to ACG which started to signal there was a shift at play.

The ACG train

From the orange ACG train that we saw trundling through the Italian alps with athletes, creatives and yes even Francis Bourgeois onboard it was a real moment as they showed one of those “only Nike could do this” moments where they took the train to the Nth degree with everything from miniature train set built onboard to custom made accessories for the passengers.

ACG at the Olympics
Then of course you have the winter Olympics products from ACG including the inflating medal stand jacket as the highlight to the whole USA athlete kits they received they really stole the show. The summer Olympics has always been such a prestigious moment for the brand, but the winter games have always been the poor relation whereas this one really felt like they took the opportunity to go all out and serve winter athletes. I mean with the roster the US always brings to the games though, it’s a perfect opportunity.

What’s been interesting is that they used the Olympics (which along with world cup and The golf and tennis majors are the biggest moments in their sporting calendar) usually resulting in a final day medal ceremony with either Tiger, Serena, Lebron or in this case Chloe Kim on the podium decked out in beautifully subtle swoosh branded outfits, this time that couldn’t have been further from how they showed up.
There was no swoosh. There was only ACG logos as the main logo. Only 5 or 10 years ago this would have been sacrosanct within the Berm in Oregon to have a person win a medal and not have the swoosh on the chest or the hat.

Nike having Humility
However I think this humility and understand as to where consumer sentiment is right now is genius. I ran the Cascais half marathon early Feb (I know you likely heard about it already from me right). At the start gate I looked around; I must have seen around 100 people lined up and probably about 5 pairs of Nikes. No joke. Its honestly wild to me as 10 or 15 years ago the number would have been around 50-70% Nike. We know the brands but Hoka, On, Asics, Brookes and many more have come in and eaten their lunch. With this shift I am seriously interested how and where Nike can make that 46bn revenue number with the drop in running, but that’s a story for another article.

Back to the shift though, they were smart as they realized that this is a genuine challenge and swoosh branded inflatable jackets might not move the needle. But ACG, the cool outdoors brand with iconic silhouettes? Oh yes please.

It’s also fascinating as the other part of the business that gas is being poured into right now is NikeSKIMS. Another non subtley swoosh branded product. I mean yes there is a swoosh tonally but this is a long way from Tiger strolling up Augusta on Sunday in a red polo with a simple white swoosh in high contrast. My last piece on SKIMS is here

The ACG background
To give the background quickly on ACG before we continue, the brand was started in 1989 after recognising its lightweight performance footwear could extend beyond traditional sport into outdoor exploration. ACG wasn’t designed to compete directly with mountaineering brands like Patagonia or The North Face. It was designed for a different consumer — urban, culturally driven, curious about exploration but not defined by it. ACG became popular with creatives, skaters, photographers, and urban explorers. It represented freedom, experimentation, and identity rather than technical superiority. ACG became one of Nike’s first true cultural sub-brands.

However over time as the brand got a grip in football (soccer for my American friends), Basketball, Running and various other huge revenue streams competing for resources it was deprioritised as can happen at a huge brand.

Since then there has been 3 major shifts:
The first was that Nike appointed Errolson Hugh as Creative Director of ACG in 2014. Hugh was not a traditional fashion designer. He studied architecture and co-founded ACRONYM, a Berlin-based technical apparel brand known for highly functional, systems-driven clothing. Under Hugh, ACG shifted dramatically to Less colourful, more minimal styles, less lifestyle, more functional pieces and technical storytelling and performance credibility which regained the brands credibility.

The second was in 2018 when Nike appointed James Arizumi as ACG Creative Director. The James Arizumi who i worked alongside at Nike SB, had a BBQ chez Moi this summer, but more famously helped create icons like the What the Dunk and Stefan Janoski line. He reframed ACG as a bridge between city and nature and ultimately made ACG culturally relevant again. That’s the power of a creative who has been in the trenches on skateboarding for over a decade as he knows the power of product, market fit and storytelling and has an unmatched style in the space. Just look at his work on revamping Nike Golf afterwards and you can see the impact he has had at Nike, a position which I feel the brand should cherish more as he is one of the most talented out there.

Then the third is this shift we see here where now that the foundations have been laid, the brand is able to be driven to scale with a new attachment to trail running which yes is where the energy is right now but also helps give the brand a sharp point. One challenge until now is that whilst the brand has been culturally relevant it hasn’t maybe had that tip of the sphere nod to performance which is an area that without Nike can struggle sometimes. But with Trail running they now have something to hang the brand on and from there scale to the outdoor inspired masses.

Winning the Trail?
Could it become the next Arcteryx as in the jacket the roadmen of London adopt? Let’s see. First, they have to win the Trail community and the jury is out on that as to whether they have products that meet the standards being set. Since their last push with ACG we have now seen Norda come in, Satisfy launch the Rocker with their very own imitable style and that’s before you look at Hoka, On, Asics, Salomon, New Balance and more in both the Trail and Running space so it’s certainly a much more competitive space.

What I will say from the outside looking in, where they are doing really well is again, in being Humble which is something that I didn’t think I would see from the brand after the last decade. But they seem to realise they don’t have all the answers. They are hiring external PR teams to drive the brand (for example Canoe in the UK), they are looking at external sales teams (which is something I never thought I would see) and they are showing up to other events like UTMB and not thinking they need to own everything. I have another article lined up somewhere and one of the main areas I found an issue was the needing to own everything themselves. There is already community out there, go get involved and support it instead of needing to do it all yourselves and put a swoosh on the end of it. It seems those days are over which is super refreshing.

Ultimately as great as the concept led apparel and Olympics outfit looked, if they really want to crack into Trail properly though, it will take a trail shoe that captures the imagination of core trail community. Its one thing to make a cool brand, but to take ACG from cool to needed is the challenge. With Hoka dropping a new shoe for UTMB thats highly anticpated, ON really stepping up and the afore mentioned Satisfy, Norda and more, until Nike ACG have a shoe to really challenge, the jury will still be out. However to get there I think there has to be one main question.

Can ACG follow the Nike SB model?
In terms of my hopes for the brand, I don’t know the intricacies of who is running ACG these days in terms of category leadership, but I do hope its people from the outdoors or trail space who understand the consumer. One of the biggest challenges I found with Nike SB is that when it started it was long time skateboarders in most of the roles from product design (James Arizumi) to sales (Scott Keating) to marketing (Hunter Muraira) and sports marketing (Kaspar Van Lierop) all amazing people who bled skateboarding. They were then backed up by reps from the industry and people who understood every nuance. So, whenever they showed up in a room you knew they were legit.

Without doubt the best crew at SB led by Sandy.

Over time Nike would send various people from around the company into SB because people would find it a fun diversion or something novel on their career CV outside of running. And those people sorry to say at times were more interested in furthering their own career than the sport they were working on. And so, I really hope that in ACG they can revive that feeling almost of a pirate ship under its own steam doing what’s right for their consumer.

If they let people who care about Trail and the outdoors define the brand, they can crack it. If its just a ploy to try and win some cool factor, i worry it might falter at the crucial innovation stage.

Linked to that importantly is people. Please don’t do a reorg in 12-18 months if it’s not working out. Please give the category and the people time. The number of good ideas and sub brands and products I have seen wilt away because of the damn re-orgs is insane. It also wrecks relationships with community leaders. The community need partners internally they can rely on for 3 to 5 years so they can build effectively instead of needing to convince a new person every year about why their project is relevant.

So in closing, I feel like much the same as Nike SKIMS is there to try and connect better with the female consumer, I think ACG can be a great way to reconnect to performance running in cool, authentic way without needing to get everyone back to wearing swooshes right away and its demonstrated two things :
Some humbleness and awareness of the situation they are dealing with
Some beautiful product explorations. And at the end of the day, that’s what we’re here for.

Off for a run now as in head-to-toe ACG. Yes, in proper British English a full kit wanker. You got me.

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