From the very beginning, Nike commercials have defined the age we live in. In the mid 1970′s, legendary copywriter John Brown created one of the first truly great Nike ads. The headline simply said “There is no finish line.” The visual for this ad was a single runner all alone on a long country road. This ad pretty well summed up where people’s heads were at back when running was first beginning to be taken seriously as a competitive sport. The new Nike commercial you feature here is equally good, but it is totally different. It shows how much sport and people in general have changed in thirty years. All the visuals are collaborative in nature. There isn’t a lone runner competing against himself anymore. There are images of teams working together. This commercial speaks to a generation of people texting each other on iPhones and visiting each other’s Facebook page twenty times a day. So much collaboration would have seemed out of place when Nike started its running shoe business in Beaverton, Oregon in the early 70′s. The imagery is perfect today however. Like the commercial says. “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.” Nike always seems to finish as a winner.