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The sportswear giant and personal-care brand team up to tackle self-esteem issues among female athletes.
Can Nike make an impact on boosting women’s confidence?
The Beaverton, Ore.-based company is aiming to do just that through a landmark partnership with Dove that puts teenage female athletes in focus. As part of the deal, both companies co-developed a coaching program centered around building body confidence in girls in the age range of 11-17.
“We’ve been having this conversation for a while about how girls are falling out of sport at twice the rate of boys, and that that’s not okay with us at Nike,” said Vanessa Garcia-Brito, Nike VP and Chief Social and Community Impact Officer. “Sport is amazing and it can have a transformative impact in our lives, but if you’re not participating then you’re not getting the benefits.”
The first-of-its-kind coaching program called Body Confident Sport, which is open source for the public to use, took over two years to develop and is based on research from the Centre of Appearance Research and Tucker Center for Girls and Women in Sport. Data in the program included studies of nearly 5,000 teenagers from the U.S., France, India, Japan, and Mexico.
Sixty percent of girls said they wanted to hear about body confidence from their coaches, and 74 percent said their coaches were the reason they felt more confident. Body Confident Sport’s program includes guidance that was clinically proven to improve self-esteem of over 1,200 girls, with a goal to reach a million across the world.
“A lot of the things that this coaching tool does is offer practical, tangible ways to make a difference for her,” Garcia-Brito said. “There are things in there that coaches can start right now that build over time to change the culture around what our bodies can do and move it away from what they look like.”
Some of the tools include encouraging positive self-talk and having body-talk free zones.
Girls who exercise or participate in sports—and stick with it through their teenage years—are more likely to have higher body confidence, as well as positive health benefits throughout their lives.
While Nike’s partnership with Dove may not have a direct impact on sales or product, Garcia-Brito sees a greater value for the brand. Tying back to the company’s founding through a coach and athlete relationship in Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight, this initiative is a key part of a larger scale goal across the portfolio to increase participation in sports equally through coaching.
“I think this threads throughout all of the work that we do,” she said. “The reality is that there’s a number of things, barriers that need to be broken down, for kids and youth and girls to really get the benefit of sports.”
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