Nike puts Kaepernick up front with ads that are sure to divide
Apparently a major sneaker company can have a soul.
Nike has made Colin Kaepernick the face of its 30th anniversary “Just Do It” campaign.
From its vast roster of superstar endorsers, Nike is shining its gigantic spotlight on an unemployed quarterback who is taking legal action against the NFL, and whose kneel-down protest against police brutality has split America roughly down the middle.
Nike’s campaign means war. Cultural, political, economic, social.
Actually the war has been raging for some time, but the world’s biggest shoe company throwing its weight behind the world’s most polarizing athletic figure drastically escalates the conflict. The heat just got turned up from simmer to boil. The Nike campaign kicked off with a close-up of Kaepernick’s face and the words “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
The reaction was quick. Nike stock fell 3 percent on the news. Other athletic shoe companies experienced similiar or greater dips, which some economists said was tariff related. #NikeBoycott became a trending hashtag on Twitter. Reports
popped up of Nike gear-burning and other protests.
Don’t wait for any cooling off for this controversy soon, considering:
The NFL season kicks off Thursday night, and Nike and the NFL are partners. In late March, Nike and the league signed a billion-dollar extension of their deal that now runs through 2028. Every NFL player wears a Nike-made uniform, with swoosh, and all sideline gear worn by players and coaches is likewise logoed. Any player or coach who wants to protest the Kaepernick-Nike partnership might have to deface his own uniform.
The NFL player-protest issue is in limbo. Team owners voted in the offseason to punish players who protest on the field, but the owners put that rule on hold pending negotiations with the players union. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said any of his players who protests will be punished, or banished. His team opens Sunday at Carolina.
The demonstrations are a pet cause of President Trump, who openly has urged owners to fire protesting players. Many NFL team owners are known to quake in fear at Trump’s demands and threats. It’s important to remember that the protests had all but disappeared from everyone’s radar until Trump revived the movement early last NFL season with insulting and demeaning tweets.
Kaepernick’s grievance against the NFL for colluding to deny him employment got a huge boost last week when an arbitrator denied the NFL’s request for a dismissal. A chunk of the money Nike pays the league for sponsorship could wind up in Kaepernick’s pocket.
Nike reportedly plans to sell Kaepernick shoes and sportswear, and to back up the initial “Believe” ad with billboards, TV commercials and online ads. A billboard of the first Kaepernick ad went up near Niketown at Union Square on Tuesday.
Nike’s corporate sincerity in backing Kaepernick’s cause was immediately called into question. After all, the company plans to make money by selling Kaepernick gear.
But if Nike didn’t have its heart and soul in this campaign, why would the company take the enormous and obvious risk in alienating millions of customers?
Nike surely is aware of the polarization resulting from Kaepernick’s cause. A recent NBC News and Wall Street Journal poll showed 54 percent of Americans feel the NFL protests are “inappropriate,” while 43 percent go with “appropriate.”
Whatever profits Nike might make on Kaepernick gear would seem to be more than offset by the loss of revenue from protests of Nike.
Nike could have avoided the backlash by simply remaining out of the fray, or by quietly backing Kaepernick. This had to be a decision made at the Phil Knight level. Maybe Knight and his knights were heeding the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
Meanwhile, the NFL is caught with its private parts in a vise. If the owners follow the lead of Trump, Jones and a majority (however narrow) of Americans, the league risks alienating about half its fans and maybe more than half its players. Almost all the protesting players are black, and 70 percent of the league’s players are black. That’s a powerful lobby.
But if the NFL caves to the players’ union, and allows at least some protests, the league risks suffering boycotts of games and team and league sponsors.
Other than the racial component of the debate, there are many shades of gray. Support for Kaepernick is problematical for those who can’t forget or forgive him wearing cartoon-pig socks to protest police brutality.
For some, the new Nike campaign casts doubt on his rebel persona.
“Revolutionaries aren’t sponsored by major corporations,” said Fox Sports commentator Jason Whitlock.
But if a revolution is being waged against forces backed by money and power, isn’t money and power needed by the revolutionaries?
And does anyone really believe Kaepernick willingly gave up a pro football career in order to cash in on his revolution by selling shoes? This is a man who, while unemployed, donated $1 million to handselected causes, and who continues to lead educational camps for inner-city kids.
If that’s all been a Kaepernick scheme to get rich selling shoes, it’s certainly revolutionary.