Why Nike’s return to Amazon is a leadership lesson, not just a marketing one.

Howard Yu’s “Why Nike Ran Back to Amazon—And Why It Scares Every Marketer” is more than a marketing case study. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when leadership misjudges the very nature of the business they’re steering.

When John Donahoe took the reins at Nike — after successful stints at eBay and ServiceNow — he applied a clear logic: cut out wholesalers, consolidate retail, and go all-in on digital.

Nike, in this vision, was a digital conversion machine.

The logic wasn’t wrong, but it was incomplete.

Because Nike isn’t Booking.com or Amazon. It doesn’t merely capture desire. It creates it.

And therein lies the leadership error. Nike’s brand power has always been rooted in myth-making, emotional storytelling, cultural relevance — in sparking desire, not just harvesting it.

By focusing too much on digital precision and stripping away the messy, human, physical parts of its brand ecosystem, Nike lost its edge. Stock prices fell. Sales declined. Donahoe stepped aside.

This isn’t a story about poor execution, it’s about strategic misalignment.

Leaders in any sector would do well to take note. In every business, there are two games being played: one of captivating, and one of converting.

The most successful leaders know which game they’re in, and when the balance starts to shift. They understand that optimizing for efficiency only works if there’s still something worth converting in the first place.

What Nike teaches us is that systems, data, and scale are not enough. Story, emotion, and connection still matter, sometimes more than ever.
Leaders need to be careful not to lose the very thing that makes their organisation meaningful in the pursuit of making it more efficient.

Yu’s article is a sharp reminder: never trade your magic for metrics.