Bend the knee for Nike’s stand against Civil War recidivists
Afriend wasn’t sure about the Nike ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, he said this week. He spoke about exploitation of a dangerous, scary time in US history so that a massive company could shift more gear. He liked the message, admired Kaepernick, but there was something about it all that stuck in the craw. He would take a stand of sorts, he said. He would wear Converse instead of Nike.
But Nike bought Converse in 2003. Nike sells billions of dollars of shoes and kit. It’s what it does. It pushes those sales through campaigns that invoke strong reactions, through advertising that is not blatantly about pushing a sale.
Nike gambles with controversy, but it’s a calculated bet. People have burnt shoes. More people will buy shoes.
Nike knows those cutting their logos off socks and torching their pairs of Air Max are not the biggest part of their market. Nike tells a good story, spinning yarns out of superstars who defied convention and shook the establishment.
When it signed Tiger Woods back in 1996, the “Hello World” ad that announced the beginning of his professional career ran: “Hello world. There are still courses in the US I am not allowed to play because of the colour of my skin. Hello world. I’ve heard I’m not ready for you. Are you ready for me?”
All hell broke loose in the tight world of golf. L Jon Wertheim wrote about it for Sports Illustrated in 2003: “The campaign immediately roiled the tradition-bound golf culture. There were so many outraged responses and calls from reporters that Jim Riswold, the [ad agency] Wieden hotshot who created the ad, considered changing his phone number.
The other players whispered that the ad was sensationalistic. A number of club pros refused to carry Nike products in their shops. Nevertheless, the ad generated tremendous buzz. According to Ad Track, 48% of consumers between ages 18 and 29 (a core Nike demographic) deemed the ad “very effective”, and later that year it was nominated for an Emmy.
One player suggested Woods had played the race card to sell products for Nike, but refused to go on the record. An ad executive said that Woods was not edgy, but “establishment”.
Woods did not court controversy, said a Nike exec, and was not comfortable with it, but he invigorated golf, drew in the crowds. Woods, 22 years later, is still the main attraction.
It would be the cheap and easy thing to write off the Kaepernick ad as a cynical move by Nike, but that would be to denigrate and ignore the importance of what the quarterback, exiled by the NFL, has brought to the discourse on modern America.
Taking the knee was not just an “anthem protest” as the likes of Fox News contend. It is not an act of hate, but of dismay and love for those Americans who believe the Civil War hasn’t ended yet. It’s a stand against injustice, racial profiling, police brutality and a president who allows and encourages the hatred to fester and continue.
Nike has seized upon that moment, tapped into the growing outrage that the nation is headed on a highway to a real-life version of
In Kaepernick it has found a lone crusader who has been ostracised by the NFL and has not played a game for over 20 months as he is viewed as toxic by coaches and team owners.
His case against the NFL for collusion against hiring him won an important ruling recently. Kaepernick’s ad will flight during the opening match of the NFL season. Nike is the supplier of the team kit for all 32 NFL teams, a deal that runs until 2028. Nike’s shares dipped after the first ad was shown this week, but recovered some of that loss a day later.
Nike’s managers, as The Guardian noted this week, are “brave, not stupid”.
What will come from this moment, from the 30th anniversary of the “Just Do It” campaign? What will we remember one day? That people burnt shoes and a childpresident sulked?
Or will we remember when a man who took a knee became a hero, a symbol to show America and the world that the rise of the far-right and their naked hatred is something that we ignore at our peril?