Nike's Best Foot Forward

Sonny Vaccaro is famous as the guy who signed Michael Jordan at Nike.

- PROSENJIT DATTA

Sonny Vaccaro is famous as the guy who signed Michael Jordan at Nike. But, as Mr. Vaccaro writes, it would be more accurate to say that he was the guy who bet his job to get Nike to sign Michael Jordan. Mr. Vaccaro had seen a sublime, last-moment shot by Jordan and knew a future great when he saw one. However, signing Jordan for Nike was anything but easy. It meant hard-selling Jordan to Nike and Nike to Jordan. Jordan preferred Adidas and told Vaccaro that if that company came anywhere close in terms of offer to anything that Nike was offering, he would go with them.

Selling Jordan to Nike was almost as tough—half of Nike's top management was not convinced that it should use the company's entire marketing budget on a single player. After all, they preferred to hedge their bets with endorsements from various players. To make things more complicated, Nike was having a bad year. It had missed the Women's Aerobics rage, on which Reebok had capitalized. It was a monumental job of persuasion, but it would go on to make billions for both Nike and Jordan.