John Donahoe Steps Down as CEO of Nike

John Donahoe’s bumpy run as president and CEO of footwear and athletic apparel colossus Nike will reach its end on Oct. 13, with the company announcing Thursday that his retirement makes way for a familiar face.

Elliott Hill, who retired from the post of president of consumer and marketplace in 2020, will succeed Donahoe on Oct. 14, with the latter staying on as an advisor through Jan. 31 to help smooth the transition.

Hill joined Nike as an intern in 1988, working his way across 19 different roles in Europe and North America. He had been leading all commercial and marketing operations for Nike and Jordan Brand before his retirement.

When Donahue took the helm at Nike in January 2020, after nearly three years as president and CEO of cloud-based platform ServiceNow, one of his moves was emphasizing limited-edition sneakers, which caused the company to lose market share to competitors such as Adidas and New Balance, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

But it was the philosophies Donahue brought from his seven-plus-year tenure as president and CEO of ecommerce giant eBay that ended up rocking the boat at Nike, according to previous ADWEEK reporting.

Nike cut partnerships with major retail outlets including DSW, Foot Locker, and Macy’s to focus on the brand’s own ecommerce channels. But as the pandemic-fueled boom in ecommerce began to fizzle out and customers returned to shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, the strategy proved unsound, per the Journal’s report.

Reshuffles in Nike’s marketing division

Former Nike marketers, as well as current and past agency partners, told ADWEEK’s Brittaney Kiefer and Rebecca Stewart in July that Nike invested heavily in performance marketing and programmatic ads to drive traffic to Nike.com and its apps in its attempt to have digital sales make up one-half of its 2022 revenue, at the expense of brand marketing.

Then-senior brand director Massimo Giunco, who left the company after 22 years in June 2022, lamented the changes that resulted in Nike’s culture.

Giunco told Kiefer and Stewart, “There was this shift in attention to any digital player while neglecting the great things we were doing. Nike became a machine to produce content to feed this digital ecosystem. It was all resources that took away from brand-building. The main objective was to drive people to Nike.com, not to resonate with or inspire people to play sport.”

Nike’s fourth-quarter and fiscal-year earnings report in June came with some more bad news, as the company reported declines of 2% in total revenue (to $12.6 billion), 7% in its direct business, and 10% in digital, causing its share price to drop on the news and resulting in a cost-cutting initiative that has claimed roughly 740 jobs to date this year.

The company would not specify how many marketing roles were impacted, but in early August, Kiefer and Stewart were able to confirm several changes as part of a major strategy shift, which began with Nicole Hubbard Graham’s return to Nike last November as chief marketing officer.

After combining its brand design and storytelling units in 2020, they are now two distinct teams again, marking the company’s renewed focus on telling the story of its brand.

Enrico Balleri, a 20-year Nike veteran who was shifted to a regional role in Milan, Italy, in 2021, returned to corporate headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., as vice president and creative director of global brand voice, with the mandate of elevating storytelling across the brand.

And another longtime Nike executive and 2020 retiree, Tom Peddle, returned to the fold in July as vp of marketplace partners, seeking to rekindle the retail relationships that were severed.