5/26/15 11:14 AM Selling Truth: How Nike's Advertising to Women Claimed a Contested Reality | Advertising & Society Review 7:2 Page 1 of 36 https://0-muse.jhu.edu.libus.csd.mu.edu/journals/advertising_and_society_review/v007/7.2grow_wolburg.html ADVERTISING & SOCIETY REVIEW E-ISSN 1154-7311 CONTENTS Selling Truth: How Nike's Advertising to Women Claimed a Contested Reality Jean M. Grow Joyce M. Wolburg Abstract: This study tracked the evolution of three "big ideas" in Nike's advertising to women from 1990 to 2000: empowerment, entitlement, and product emphasis. It also takes a longitudinal look at the process from which the ads were created and the way the creative team addressed the constraints upon that process. Based on oral histories taken from key informants employed at Nike and its two ad agencies during that decade, it is the story of how the creative team produced advertising that challenged the media norms affecting the roles of women associated with the institution of sports. Though their creative strategy was simply to speak the truth as they saw it, it frequently pitted them against the executives at Nike in a battle over whose reality would be depicted. If you let me play sports, I will like myself more; I will have more self- confidence, if you let me play sports. —Nike advertisement, "If You Let Me Play" "It wasn't advertising. It was truth," claimed Janet Champ, chief copywriter on Nike's women's advertising during the 1990s. "We weren't selling a damn thing. Just the truth. And behind the truth, of course, the message was brought to you by Nike." Champ was describing the creative process behind the award-winning ad, "If You Let Me Play," part of the powerful Participation campaign that featured teenage girls on a playground talking about the meaning of sports in their lives). Her remark illuminates the defiance that typified that creative process but also shows the personal meaning she derived from having created the ad, which we will explore in depth through this article.