$800 decks on internal brand promotion - it still baffles me that this company is profitable with all the reckless spending… but how else will leadership know that I (a team of etws) did something?
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to those who are surprised by the fact that upper management pay others to prepare their presentations. In EHQ, there are a few guys who were pretty good (talented) in preparing ppt's. when they realized that this is a gold mine, they quit their jobs at Nike and started preparing ppt's for those VP's, the top ones of EMEA region...oh yes it is a thing for a long time, I am talking about early 2000's...
This post is HILARIOUS and so true! When I was in category a few years ago we spent $15k on a fancy recap to JM on an initiative that literally lost the company money… the meeting got rescheduled 20x and each time my peers would go into a frenzy about what else they needed to do to make the presentation better and I just wanted to slap everyone and say “who cares, this wasn’t a success, why are we spending so much time and effort spinning it instead of learning from our mistakes and doing something that does work” … but like you said the culture is baffling. JM didn’t even pay attention, was a total waste of time
Haha the ego driving a Porsche. You must know my manager.
I worked within the Marketing and BC Org for many years and can tell you $800 is nothing when it comes to promoting work up the ladder. I routinely worked on presentations for MP and the ELT and can confirm we spend many millions annually presenting to these highly paid kingmakers. It’s amazing how obsessed people would get over presenting to these holders of the keys. Seriously people, if you think $800 is something Nike would even blink at, you’ve got to understand that we spend nearly 100x that quarterly to communicate to the big bosses what all of us peons, no matter how important we think we are, really accomplish in our day job. From what I’ve seen over the decades, the closer you get to these dog and pony shows, the more likely you are to eventually show up to work in a Porsche worried about 2 things, what’s “leadership” think of me and where can I park my ego.
If you don’t know who made your slides (because it wasn’t you), * you * are the smoke and mirrors.
This is the most relatable post I have seen on this website. Nike culture is baffling
Good work if you can get it.
Until I read OP’s post I was completely unaware that anyone at Nike actually pays other people to prepare their PowerPoints. I didn’t know that was even a thing. Is it a common practice? In what orgs?
Reckless spending has always been a thing at Nike. Ever seen a senior Nike executive spend $30,000 per night on a hotel room? Ever seen multi-million dollar “off-sites” that were really just extravagant vacations with cool-kid work colleagues? Ever seen a Nike colleague order multiple $500 bottles of wine at a restaurant and not bat an eye? I’ve seen all of these things. Believe it or not I’ve even seen far worse. If I told you about some of the worst abuses I’m certain my post would be removed within minutes.
That's literally every organization. Read up on the Pareto Principle - it's literally everywhere and just how orgs always end up working. Believe me, Nike is well aware that a small vital percentage is disproportionately directly responsible for everything, but you still need the "useless" people for everything to work. If you want to survive at Nike you either needs to be a natural con artist, or figure out how to not go crazy when you have very little tangible to prove your value.
You must work in marketing, wish I had a deck budget