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26-MAR-2025 | Nike's "There is no finish line" Ad

Author

Dan Bogachek
March 26, 2025

You glance at your watch.

It’s 6:28. You’ve been at it since 3.
Crap. Your hot date is at 7. Running late. Sink shower it is.
Nowhere close to done editing…

“…at least all the ideas are laid out, so there’s that. Did I miss anything? I don’t think so? Ok, but how do I make it flow? I need to get the final draft to Stacey for design asap, team cutoff is at noon Thursday…”

You’ve spent dinner completely distracted. Your date just took off. You go home exhausted, plod to your desk, and flip open the laptop.

Or… what if:

5:41 — you’re out of the shower and lip-syncing.
6:17 — dressed to the nines and zenned out.
7:03 — the sunset glints off your aviators as you smile hello.
8:36 — it actually feels like you’re hitting it off. Not just hot, funny to boot.
Next morning, 9:27 — final draft ready in your inbox.
10:31 — Stacey messages back, “thanks, looks good!”

The difference?

Copygloss handled it. Before you left for the date, actually.

For help with editing, email Dan:
[email protected].

Nike's "There is no finish line" Ad

THERE IS NO FINISH LINE.

Sooner or later the serious runner goes through a special, very personal experience that is unknown to most people.

Some call it euphoria. Others say it’s a new kind of mystical experience that propels you into an elevated state of consciousness.

A flash of joy. A sense of floating as you run.

The experience is unique to each of us, but when it happens you break through a barrier that separates you from casual runners. Forever.

And from that point on, there is no finish line.

You run for your life. You begin to be addicted to what running gives you.

We at Nike understand the feeling. There is no finish line for us either. We will never stop trying to excel, to produce running shoes that are better and better every year.

Beating the competition is relatively easy.

But beating yourself is a never ending commitment. 🏁 

  • Hook: subversion of expectations, making room for punchline part I as a callback midway through.

  • “Unknown to most people” → creates aspiration to be in the elite in-group, or self-satisfaction & resonance for those already in it. Identity, identity, identity.

  • Repeating sets of couplets. Notice all the pairs?

  • Complete ideas > complete sentences. The sentences fragments are perfect as snapshots.

  • See the transition between the 3rd and 2nd person? It hinges on the back half of their description of the emotion. And once that “you” hits, you’ll get the feelings from the first half into your imagination too, if they hadn’t already popped in (starting at “Some call it euphoria…”).
    “They” → “you” → “we” & “you” together.

  • Punchline part II — absolute bars. “Beating the competition… never ending commitment.”

    • Humblebrag. The truth of “beating yourself is a never ending commitment” props up the implication in the first line: “yeah we already beat the competition and it wasn’t even that bad 😎”

    • It’s an evolution of the “there is no finish line” punchline which already had its own callback. Two callbacks in one short segment, throwing some casual shade with the second one. 🥵