You want irony? People not realizing what Nike can and cannot do. Nike has stopped delivery of the new shoe, they can’t pull existing product because they’re a manufacturer not a retailer, they might end new manufacturing but that’s not going to do anything about product already in the pipeline. And of course they actually HAVE faced media pressure, as Vick’s only major marketing deal they were a pretty easy mark. As for the blood money from what I’ve heard Vick merch is tanking, I saw yesterday his NFL gear had gone from #2 in sales to #33, it’ll probably continue to drop. So assuming Nike gear is following the NFL licensed gear trend those sales aren’t going through the roof. As for their stock price, looked at the market today, everybody is falling.
People really need to scale back their outrage so that they’re satisfied with the possible. Nike has publicly done about 2/3 of what they possibly can do: ended shipment of the new product and announced there will be no commercials made with Vick for the duration. They can’t pull product that’s already been shipped to retailers, they can (but so far haven’t) end production of the other products and announce a buy back from stores, of course the buy back would be completely voluntary the stuff is the stores’ property now. If they end production of the other Vick products that’s as much washing their hands of the situation as they can do, there’s no way they’d opt out of his contract until he’s convicted so don’t expect that for a while.
Re: Nike has publicly done about 2/3 of what they possibly can do
Not even close!
They could cut all ties with him.
Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough reply.
That clears up a lot of questions I have had. I still think their PR approach was very badly handled. They could have helped themselves by putting out a statement publicly.they could have placed information on their website. they could have pulled the Vick merchandise off the website “until further notice”.
But most of all they could have had venues for customers’ ‘outrage” to be expressed easily on their website ( which is extremely difficult to navigate for “comments ‘ to the corporate headquarters. ...also a phone line with representatives explaining the process Nike was taking.
As for ‘getting sued’ i am sure Nike has a legal department to handle this.and yes, it is a risk either way.