As Olympics Dawn, Nike Explores the Winning Mindset

No participation trophies are handed out in Nike’s 2024 summer campaign, “Winning Isn’t for Everyone.”

Launched ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, this in-your-face effort from Wieden+Kennedy celebrates athletes who, above all else, are out to win.

Now, are you are the kind of person who lets your friend beat you at tennis every once in a while just to boost their ego? Are you fine with your favorite WNBA team tanking in the finals because they tried their best?

If so, this work may not be for you.

Then again, you’re not a professional athlete. And it isn’t your job to win. Athletes can’t always play nice—at least not on the field, court or wherever they pursue their sport.

That’s according to me, a casual sports fan, who, as casual as I try to be, simply won’t be okay if the New York Liberty goes down in the finals this year.

Anyway, the anthemic spot “Winning Isn’t for Everyone,” directed by Kim Gehrig of Somesuch, is at the heart of the new Nike campaign. The team at W+K smartly cast actor Willem Dafoe to narrate.

At the outset of the ad, Dafoe, in his gravelly voice, asks, “Am I a bad person?”

What follows is an action-packed supercut—edited by Spotwelders’ Robert Duffy—of superstar Nike athletes including LeBron James, Victor Wenbamyama, Sha’Carri Richardson, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, Sabrina Ionescu, A’ja Wilson and more in the heat of competition.

Dafoe represents their collective mindset, basking in the oft obsessive, selfish and even deceptive spirit it takes to win.

This ad itself serves as an example. Nike’s not an official Olympics sponsor. And yet, here we are talking about the sneaker giant in Oregon as the games in Paris are about to begin.

That’s just how winners do it.

Back to the ad: “I have no empathy,” Dafoe says before laughingly delivering the line, “I don’t respect you!”

It’s a winning read from the 68-year-old actor, who has stayed in shape physically and mentally by practicing ashtanga yoga for the last 40 years.