Walt Stack’s lesson for Nike 🏃🏼‍♂️, Starbucks takes a fashion bow, Alphabet at $3 trillion and all the latest in brand news

Weekly Exhale

Nike has revived its Just Do It tagline. More than 35 years old, and conceived—ironically—from the final words of a man about to die.

In 1976, Gary Gilmore was sentenced to death for two murders, the same year the U.S. reintroduced capital punishment. He refused appeals, demanded immediate execution. Offered a choice between hanging and firing squad, he chose the gun—more reliable.

In Draper, Utah, he was strapped to a chair, a black hood pulled over his head, a paper target pinned to his chest. Five volunteer marksmen fired.

His last words? "Let's do it."

And just like that, Gilmore became the first man executed in America in nearly a decade. And the unlikely inspiration for a sports shoe ad campaign.

So when Nicole Hubbard Graham, Chief Marketing Officer for Nike, announces the return of Just Do It as a call to action—and dutifully insists it's "more than just a tagline"—she's right.

Dead right.

Nike's creative roots have always been steeped in the real stuff. Where the dark, the random, the unsettling can tip into something accidentally genius. Only a few lines in marketing carry a shadow this long, and with such eerie prescience. Within Nike's long history of irreverence, these three words have carried further than most brands could ever dream to reach.

And their reintroduction comes at a telling moment.

Lately, Nike has been running on ageing knees. Creaky cartilage. Arthritic even.

In Q4 of fiscal 2025, sales fell 12% year on year. From the highs of 2021 to the lows of 2025, the company's valuation collapsed by 65%, wiping more than $150 billion of its shares.

The reasons are many. The pandemic over-developed Nike's direct-to-consumer muscle, leaving it lopsided. China, its second biggest market, faltered. Specialist brands like On Running nibbled at Nike's cankles. Data-led death spirals. And McKinsey decks became little more than bum padding before taking a spanking from the market.

What everyone agrees on is that Nike stopped making cool products. Lost sight of who it was.

"New" CEO Elliot Hill was a VP dragged out of retirement. He'd first walked into Nike as an intern in 1988, the year Just Do It was born. CMO Hubbard Graham was also a rehire, returning after 18 years at the company.

Nike was less interested in building something new so much as reclaiming what once felt valuable.

Well, almost.

Go back to that first Just Do It launch spot, and you'll see a single, shirtless runner: an eighty-year-old jogging across the Golden Gate Bridge. Asked how he keeps his teeth from chattering in winter, he shrugs: "I leave them in the locker."

The new ad? Carlos Alcaraz, Saquon Barkley, Caitlin Clark, Tara Davis-Woodhall, Shreyas Iyer, LeBron James, Rayssa Leal, Scottie Scheffler, Vini Jr., Hunter Woodhall, Qinwen Zheng. And, as if that weren't enough, Tyler, The Creator on voiceover.

For Nike, Just Do It works like a Zip file, compressing the brand's entire story.

The trouble is, this new campaign doesn't add much to the folder.

Reality? Reviving slogans is more like polishing up advertising furniture from a bygone age, when stories built to a payoff, an end frame. Like anything old, they demand time, conviction, consistency—more than marketing can usually muster in the two-second blur brands are born in today.

Truthfully, the revival of Just Do It isn't for consumers at all. It's corporate self-talk. Affirmations in the mirror, said loudly enough for investors to overhear. At best, TikTok's marketing oracles turn the comeback into a fight, feeding the algorithm what it really wants: an argument.

But let's be real. Most of us never retired Just Do It from our minds in the first place.

__

The 80-year-old runner in Nike's original ad was Walt Stack. A cement mason with a Popeye jaw, a foul mouth, and a smile that had weathered its share of punches. He lived nearly a century, endured a brutal childhood, even served time in Alcatraz.

And still he kept running. Every single day. Until the end, 1995, seven years after making the spot.

His routine was religious. Each morning, Walt pulled on a bright red cap, biked six miles to the Golden Gate Bridge, stripped to his shorts, and ran across to Sausalito. Then back again—seventeen miles. After that? A swim in the freezing bay. He became such a fixture that locals nicknamed him "Mayor of the Golden Gate Bridge," and when he died, San Francisco's newspapers reported it as if a statesman had passed.

But Walt actually came late to running. He was 57. And he wasn't fast: 8.5 minutes a mile, never more. Sports Illustrated once joked that if Walt ever fell out of an airplane, he'd hit the ground at 8.5 minutes per mile. His motto? Start slow, then taper off.

Back in the day, endurance races never had cut-off times. So Walt would take the whole day, sometimes two. Along the way, he'd stop for pancakes and coffee. He'd finish shirtless, tattooed, grinning and holding a beer, offering swigs to fellow runners.

And while he stood for the old and the slow, that wasn't the whole story. He also stood for women, at a time when doctors claimed that women's bodies couldn't endure the strain.

Walt thought that was nonsense.

His wife was an activist who helped change U.S. labour law. Her influence led Walt to help organise women's long-distance runs, paving the way for the first women's Olympic marathon in Los Angeles, 1984.

Joan Ullyot, iconic marathon runner and a key figure in the fight, wrote in Walt's biography: "Underneath the rough exterior, the corny jokes, there is a dedicated idealist. Women laugh at his off-colour remarks and enjoy his frank admiration, because they realise Walt is the greatest feminist amongst us."

If Just Do It was born from a shooting in Utah, it re-emerges now against fresh headlines from the same state. For Walt, running was a bridge—to Sausalito, and to something larger. "You can be a real Bircher, I can be a Communist, and I can still love you because I figure you're a runner. You're a good Joe, and you'll feel the same way about me."

Nike's CMO, Hubbard Graham, nodded to an "80-year-old runner" when announcing the return of the brand's iconic line. But she didn't mention Walt's name. And so, amid a montage of global stars—LeBron, Alcaraz, Caitlin Clark, Tyler, The Creator—Walt Stack, the heart of it all, was missing.

And yet Walt's philosophy of Just Do It is the real one: keep going, keep laughing.

And in a signed copy of his book, he made it simpler still:

Dear runner. Keep breathing. Walt.

That's the part brands lose sight of. They pitch greatness. They sell aspiration. But most people are just trying to get by. One step, then the next.

Real greatness lives in the little things. The messy, ordinary, staying-alive kind of greatness. Small and steady. The kind we so often let slip past without reminding ourselves it's there.

Love for yourself. Love for the stranger running beside you.

Together on the long road across the bridge.

Every single day.

The way Walt showed us.

Let's rise together with every issue. ♡

Market Moves

U.K. jobless market implies Bank of England to hold rates | The Wall Street Journal

U.K. estimates for productivity to be downgraded | Financial Times

Rachel Reeves pledges to cut more regulators at private equity meeting | The Guardian

U.S. toying with scrapping quarterly reporting | CNBC

Brand Beat

Nike headed for 'swoosh' shaped recovery | Market Watch

Luckin Coffee challenges Starbucks with aggressive US expansion | Entrepreneur

McDonald’s invests $200 million in regenerative technology | AP News

Gwyneth Paltrow unveils her new fashion line | Vogue

Liquid Death and Boost Mobile launch co-branded ad campaign | Mediacat

L’Oréal Paris dethrones Charlotte Tilbury | Cosmetics Business

U.K. advertising watchdog accused of flouting its own campaign rules | The Guardian

JCPenney preps holiday season with laugh-out-loud deals | Marketing Dive

Starbucks takes center stage at New York Fashion Week | WWD

Brazilian fashion collaboration breathes new life into Barbour | Harper's Bazaar

Doja Cat’s lipstick stunt is the ultimate celebrity endorsement | The Times

Vibe marketing blends precise execution with creative imagination | TechRadar

Jaguars boss won’t reverse rebrand despite fan uproar | The Wall Street Journal

American Eagle stock jumps 24% on Sydney Sweeney ad campaign | New York Post

YouTube unveils generative AI tools for creators and viewers | Bloomberg

Trump administration reaches framework to avoid TikTok ban | Mashable

...and sues New York Times for $15 billion | Fast Company

Channel 4 plans longest uninterrupted reel of Trump’s untruths | The Guardian

Roblox faces wrongful death lawsuit after teen’s suicide | The New York Times

Lime bikes enjoy a London tube strike moment | Brand Builder’s Blueprint

Pornhub traffic dips during Apple event but holds on Android | Mashable

System1's ad of the week goes to Cologuard | System1

Trending: Tinkr—aesthetically designed tools | Thingtesting

Starting Up

Klarna IPO turns 40 employees into millionaires | Sifted

Robotics startup Figure now valued at $39 billion | Reuters

U.K. risks becoming incubator economy | City A.M.

$30M startup builds pet–sized robot factory that learns from humans | TechCrunch

Questioning start-up margins is boring cliché | a16z

AI startup founders and the sleepless, booze-free grind | The Wall Street Journal

Little Spoon says losing a major deal saved their startup | Inc.

Robotics startups enter a golden age beyond AI | TechCrunch

Tech Tidbits

Elon Musk briefly loses world's richest title | Entrepreneur

OpenAI’s $300 billion Oracle deal triggers AI bubble alarms | Fortune

Alphabet hits $3 trillion market cap amid AI momentum | Reuters

AI isn't in one bubble but three distinct ones | Fast Company

Googlers are mocking you—can you really blame them? | The Media Leader

Tesla pivots to robots as investors question sales and valuation | Bloomberg

Google admits open web is rapidly declining | The Verge

AI pressure keeps Sam Altman awake since ChatGPT launched | Fortune

Venture Vibes

Venture Capital ruined the CPG space | Feed Me

Robinhood launches publicly traded venture capital fund | The New York Times

Index's Danny Rimer’s bet on Figma at seed stage | Fortune

Report: UK Venture capital market performance 2025 | Finsmes

Vibe-coding platform Replit nets $3 billion valuation | Bloomberg

Design Driven

OpenAI unveils first AI animated film at Cannes | #WERSM

Supreme x Nike revamp Air Force 1 Low with timeless twist | Stupid Dope

Herman Miller revamps classic Eames chair with sustainable materials | Design Milk

Katherine McMahon’s neon sign art lights up London | Cool Hunting

Happiness

How loneliness is reshaping the modern workplace | Harvard Business Review

Guttenberg to Zuckerberg: How to handle disruption | Big Think

Walt Stack, 87, beloved San Francisco runner and icon | Los Angeles Times

If you like what you've read, do subscribe and share.

Stay gold. 🙏🏻