🏆 "Back Your Winners" Like Nike Does

One product. 12 million sales. Here's their playbook.

"Concentrate your time, your brains, and your advertising money on your successes. Back your winners, and abandon your losers." –David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising

From just west of Otay Lakes — hey, it’s Luis.

I picked up pickleball last week and played five days straight — including games with my son and brother this weekend. I shared something with my thirteen-year-old, who’s a junior tennis player: “We only win or learn how to improve our game.”

That mindset applies to email too. Every campaign teaches you something. The ones that win? Back them harder.

Nike launched the Pegasus in 1982.

First month: 8,000 pairs sold. Next month: 35,000. Six months in: over 300,000.

By 2001, they had sold 19 million pairs. The 35th version? 12 million pairs in a single year.

I know this shoe personally. I run the trails behind the Olympic Training Center in my Pegasus 39s — Siren Red. I wear the Pegasus Turbo Next Nature Flyknits in Black/Off Noir for everyday use. When the 41s launched, my size sold out before I could check out.

That’s not luck. That’s what happens when you find a winner and refuse to let it die.

Here’s the principle.

Most brands treat a successful product launch like a single event. Nike treats it like a campaign that never ends.

Jeff Walker put it plainly in Launch: you can’t rely on a single marketing message — you need to think in sequences.

Nike knows something that most e-commerce brands don’t: the space between “coming soon” and “buy now” isn’t dead time. It’s energy building. Each email, each new color drop, each lifestyle angle increases tension — until there’s only one way to release it.

They’re not creating desire. They’re channeling it. The runner who wants to go faster already exists. Nike just keeps showing up with a new reason to act.

Watch how they executed the Pegasus 41 launch.

When the Pegasus 41 launched in April 2024, Nike didn’t send one email and move on. They built a wave that lasted four months — and here’s every email that hit my inbox:

• June 7 — Gear Made To Go Fast (teaser)

• June 13 — Just in: Dunk Low Retro & more

• June 21 — Run in the Pegasus 41

• July 6 — Power Your Run With Air Zoom

• July 14 — 🎨 Get the new color: Nike Pegasus 41

• July 24 — 🎨 Get the new color: Nike Pegasus 41

• August 1 — 🎨 Get the new color: Nike Pegasus 41

• August 5 — Keep running your best

• August 9 — 🎨 Get the new color: Nike Pegasus 41

• August 14 — Upgrade your run

• September 5 — The all-new Nike Pegasus 41 ‘Prequel’ is here

• October 10 — Just In: Nike Pegasus 41 GORE-TEX

Twelve emails. Four months. One shoe.

Notice how the campaign doesn’t end — it evolves. By October, the same shoe became a new product for a new season. That’s not a new campaign. That’s a winner being backed all the way to winter.

Look at the pattern: one email every seven to ten days, alternating between direct product angles and lifestyle angles. And when a subject line worked — Get the new color — they didn’t retire it. They ran it again. And again. And again.

That’s Ogilvy’s rule in action: if you write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling.

The subject line that drove it:

🎨 Get the new color: Nike Pegasus 41 - See the newest color of the gear you love.

Simple. Specific. Repeatable. It works because it channels an existing desire — runners already love the shoe. The new color is just a fresh reason to act.

📁 Paid subscribers: all 12 Nike Pegasus 41 emails are waiting for you below. Add them to your swipe file.

Your battle plan.

1. Find your one winner.

Not your full catalog. One product — your best seller, your highest-rated item, the thing customers mention most. That’s where you start.

2. Build a 30-day follow-up plan.

Week 1: Lead with the product’s top benefit. Week 2: A customer story or review. Week 3: A new use case or angle. Week 4: A new color, variant, or limited stock.

3. When something works, run it again.

Track which emails drive clicks and which clicks become sales. When you find a subject line that converts — don’t retire it. Back it. Nike ran Get the new color five times in four months. Your best angle deserves the same treatment.

4. Add more before you change anything.

For brands under $3M, the answer is almost never a new product or a new campaign. It’s more follow-up on the winner you already have. More emails. More angles. More waves.

You don’t need 12 million sales to use this playbook. You need one winning product and the discipline to back it — not once, but relentlessly.

The brands that compound revenue aren’t the ones with the most products. They’re the ones who found what works and refused to stop.

Follow a premium brand with emails worth studying? Drop it in the comments. If I feature it in a future issue, I’ll give you the credit.

Talk soon,

Luis Lozano
Founder & Editor, ⚡Copybeast

P.S. — The Nike Pegasus 41 campaign screenshots — all 12 emails — are in your swipe file below. Pull them out the next time you’re planning a product push.