Posted on 09/06/2018 7:31:55 AM PDT by Liberty7732
Few companies have tailored their image to a broad audience more carefully than Nike. From NBA greats Michael Jordan and LeBron James to soccer great Cristiano Ronaldo to tennis great Serena Williams, Nike has used mainstream sports superstars to instill the idea that if you “Just Do It” you can achieve anything.
All of which makes their choice of the marginalized, controversial and deeply divisive Colin Kaepernick as the face of their new “Just Do It” marketing blitz bewildering. He is not in sports at all, after a brief NFL career in which he was never a star. Most of his fame outside NFL football junkies accrued when he decided to kneel during the National Anthem before games to protest perceived police violence against blacks — climbing on the shoulders of Black Lives Matter, another divisive group.
Kaepernick’s career was already sliding downward after just one good year, and it dropped off the edge due to his polarizing activism, his lack of being a good talent fit for many teams, and his being distracted by the controversy he created. For the limited value he brought, the circus he also brought was not worth it.
This was a similar dynamic with Tim Tebow — a Bible-believing, mainstream Christian who was also divisive and controversial with his overt, on-field and off-field Christianity and who was never going to be the face of a Nike campaign blitz. Not a bad decision, as he did not fit their successful Jordan-James-Ronaldo formula — but in the same way Kaepernick does not fit it.
Whatever the drawbacks of Tebow, Kaepernick is ten-fold. Which makes it a perplexing business decision; less so a social justice statement.
The only real business explanation is one that Ben Shapiro puts forward: Nike is trolling Trump and conservatives to create a bunch of free publicity (yes, I get the irony) and increase sales, particularly to blacks who buy Nikes at a much higher percentage than whites — but still smaller raw numbers. If that is the business reason, it is likely they have badly misjudged how broadly unpopular Kaepernick is in the mainstream culture, particularly with sports fans — an obvious target market for Nike.
The day following the announcement and the vacuous and clearly inaccurate promo statement under the retired millionaire’s picture — “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything” — the stock valuation of Nike plummeted by $4 billion. That is wildly outside the normal trade range and a direct market response to their decision. And in fact, while it gained back about half a billion of that, the price has now stayed steady at the lower level. Nike is a less valuable company today than it was Monday.
The non-business decision is that Nike, like the NFL, is run not just by social justice-sensitive progressives, but by social justice-sensitive progressives bubbled away in elite and out-of-touch circles, where they all agree over Russian Caviar with Gourmandises Blini that cops are racists, Trump voters are racists, NFL fans outside the luxury skybox are icky and social justice is an important cause célèbre — just not, you know, in their guarded, gated neighborhoods.
The degree to which the progressive elites misunderstand middle America can hardly be overstated. Nike head honchos watched ESPN go full social justice lefty and their ratings tank. They watched CNN do the same and lose one-quarter of its audience in 12 months. They watched the NFL ratings plummet by standing weakly by and allowing a social justice takeover.
Yet they still invited this into their company voluntarily. This Nike example, following on last year’s flaming controversy that centered around Kaepernick, probably illustrates the disconnected nature as well as any.
Nike’s decision just emptied a tank of gasoline on the formerly smoldering burn pile. The NFL had hoped it was moving beyond it. But thanks to Nike’s decision with the toxic Kaepernick — again, just head-shaking that Nike would do this — even the spaghetti-spined, craven NFL had to issue a squishy non-statement statement.
“The National Football League believes in dialogue, understanding and unity. We embrace the role and responsibility of everyone involved with this game to promote meaningful, positive change in our communities,” NFL Executive Vice President of Milquetoast Blather Jocelyn Moore said in a statement.
But here’s the problem. Nike is the NFL’s single biggest business partner (outside perhaps the television networks.) Nike and the NFL have a 10-year contract in place, through 2028, in which the shoe company supplies game-day uniforms to all 32 franchises, a really popular promotion among fans. (Or was. We’ll see how this plays out week after week.) Nike’s iconic swoosh is all over NFL games. And Nike uses the NFL logo prominently in its promotions — including the Kaepernick fiasco.
That means the kneeling controversy burn pile is overnight back to licking flames into the sky — just days before tonight’s kickoff of opening day. Maybe Nike will air their Kaepernick ad during NFL games. That should work great!
Perhaps feckless NFL management and in-your-face Nike kind of deserve each other. American deserves better.
The problem with FR is that it can become an echo chamber where everyone thinks that anyone on the left who supports various causes is like a bubble headed college age SJW. That's just not the case; everything (other than say vanity media pubs like WAPO) is intentional and calculated to increase sales/profits.
Secondly, as to your/Whitlock's point about defending their existing low-cost production, that is *always* a secondary concern of marketing/media driven companies. Nike's mark-up percentage over baseline costs is similar to Coca Cola's - maybe 5% (if that). Everything else is marketing and sales. What if there input/labor costs were to double or even treble? It wouldn't make any difference really since the big ticket expenditures are spending $billions on image ads to induce purchases.
Once again, I suggest people sometimes drop the politics for politics angle, and entertain the idea that politics can be exploited as just another advertising campaign. Not saying Nike will pull it off, that's why the curtain opens. But it is definitely well thought out and executed.
The gratuitous bashing of Tim Tebow, and equating him with Kaepernick, is obnoxious.
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Corporations like Facebook, Twitter, Levi Strauss, Nike, etc are all joining the establishment side in persuading Americans to accept their agenda. Those that don’t accept will be first marginalized, then persecuted and driven from polite society jobs, activities, and communications.
Oh, that’s tonight? Thanks, I’ll be watching that then. I hope someone does an article tomorrow, who got more viewers, the NFL’s opening night or Donald Trump’s rally. Puuuuuuurrrrrfect!!
New Balance is a better product anyway.
I wouldn’t watch anything on Sling Orange or Sling Blue. Cannot support 90% of those channels.
Nike backed Tonya Harding too... and the nutty shoe sniffer... this isn’t their first ‘slap in the face’ to decent Americans:
http://adage.com/article/news/nike-thin-ice-harding-ploy/88550/
Nike has had more turnovers than the Buffalo Bills lately.
First, its major benefactor, Michael Jordan, retires and then jumps to another sport where the players wear cleats. Then Nike runs the inexplicable Dennis Hopper “crazed referee” ads extolling the virtues of sniffing shoes.
Then we have the Tonya Harding affair.
When Bob Garfield wrote, in his usual forthright manner, that the Hopper spots for Nike might be a mite insensitive to people with mental and emotional problems, most of our readers thought Bob was hopelessly out of it (”Bob Garfield needs to loosen his tie-it’s strangling his abi ity to recognize an ad that hits its audience,” read one).
Bob didn’t realize that it’s simply Politically Incorrect to criticize anything coming out of Nike’s ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy (just as it’s Politically Incorrect to criticize anything coming out of the entire state of Oregon).
Nike’s $25,000 grant to Tonya Harding is a great example of not only bad timing but also bad PR. The young woman already had admitted to knowing persons close to her were responsible in the attack on rival skater Nancy Kerrigan right after it happened, so at the very least she’s guilty of a cover-up (didn’t that almost get President Nixon impeached?) And isn’t a cover-up “due process” enough for the U.S. Olympic Committee to kick her off the team?
If they really wanted to help black lives maybe they could open some factories in the inner cities of the US and employ Americans.
“Just Screw It.”
Like millions upon millions of former fans we staunchly refuse to support an organization that habitually spits on our country, our flag, our vets and in our faces.
The national felon league can rot!
BOYCOTT THEM TO HELL!
Of course they could... but THAT would cost actual money.
/SARC
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