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No U.S. state had carried out an execution in nearly a decade until Gary Gilmore, 36, was put to death by a firing squad in a Utah prison on Jan. 17, 1977. Gilmore had been convicted the previous year of killing a gas station attendant and a motel clerk.
According to Norman Mailer’s acclaimed novel “The Executioner’s Song,” Gilmore was asked if he had any last words before the sentence was carried out by the five-firing squad. He responded, simply, “Let’s Do It.”
Some 11 years later, those words stuck in the mind of advertising executive Dan Wieden, who grew up in the same Oregon city as Gilmore. Focusing on those words while preparing a campaign pitch for Nike, Wieden altered the phrase to “Just Do It” and put it in front of executives at the shoe and apparel company.
“I went to Nike and (co-founder) Phil Knight said, ‘We don’t need that,’” Wieden said in 2015. “I said, ‘Just trust me on this one.’ So, they trusted me, and it went big pretty quickly.”
Liz Dolan, who was the chief marketing officer at Nike, recalled that executives would search for a new slogan on a regular basis even after “Just Do It” took off, but the company was swayed by letters from people saying the simple phrase had inspired them in some facet of life.
No U.S. state had carried out an execution in nearly a decade until Gary Gilmore, 36, was put to death by a firing squad in a Utah prison on Jan. 17, 1977. Gilmore had been convicted the previous year of killing a gas station attendant and a motel clerk.
According to Norman Mailer’s acclaimed novel “The Executioner’s Song,” Gilmore was asked if he had any last words before the sentence was carried out by the five-firing squad. He responded, simply, “Let’s Do It.”
Some 11 years later, those words stuck in the mind of advertising executive Dan Wieden, who grew up in the same Oregon city as Gilmore. Focusing on those words while preparing a campaign pitch for Nike, Wieden altered the phrase to “Just Do It” and put it in front of executives at the shoe and apparel company.
“I went to Nike and (co-founder) Phil Knight said, ‘We don’t need that,’” Wieden said in 2015. “I said, ‘Just trust me on this one.’ So, they trusted me, and it went big pretty quickly.”
Liz Dolan, who was the chief marketing officer at Nike, recalled that executives would search for a new slogan on a regular basis even after “Just Do It” took off, but the company was swayed by letters from people saying the simple phrase had inspired them in some facet of life.
