Ubiquitous Nike knows sports transcend the game

with Kaepernick, Nike has made a bold and enterprising stance to back a black athlete who many view as the most polarizing of our current times.

Nike released Kaepernick’s “Just Do It” ad four days before the start of the NFL season, and as many sports commentators have pointed out, it will force the league owners and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to remain engaged with the socialjustice causes the players are representing.

The players who are continuing to kneel or stay in their locker rooms while the national anthem is played now have a powerful ally in Nike, which outfits all 32 NFL teams. Nike’s commercial campaign with Kaepernick is also a huge investment in the social capital he carries.

The ad depicts this in a very shrewd way; it does not feature Kaepernick or any other athlete kneeling during the anthem. Instead, it begins with Kaepernick narrating about achieving the impossible and silencing doubters who try to kill dreams. The athletes seen in the beginning are not the icons of this generation like LeBron James and Serena Williams, who are shown later. We are introduced to inspiring images of a skateboarder tumbling off a handrail, a little boy with no legs competing in a wrestling match, a girl who is both homecoming queen and a linebacker at her high school and a boy who lost 120 pounds and beat a brain tumor.

Kaepernick is not wearing any Nike gear and there is no footage of his electrifying scrambling plays when he was the San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback. He’s in street clothes, sporting a black turtleneck, a suede coat and his trademark Afro. His presence is a compelling reminder of the protests he invigorated two years ago.

After watching the ad, I thought about how different the underlying message is from when Jordan was Nike’s marketing phenom back in the ‘80s and ‘90s. One of the classic Nike commercials that signaled Jordan’s rise to superstar sportsman status was his tag-teaming with Spike Lee’s Mars Blackmon character in 1989. The catchphrase was “It’s gotta be the shoes!”

Nike was not trying to make a social statement with that ad. It was solely for product endorsement, and throughout Jordan’s NBA tenure he was often criticized for not taking a visible stand on racial and cultural issues. He did engage with black youth through Nike’s P.L.A.Y. program, and he was featured in “just say no” ads encouraging young people to avoid the pitfalls of drug use. But Jordan was never viewed as a socially conscious athlete.

Nike also bore much of the criticism Jordan received during the prime of his career, as many people felt the shoe giant was only concerned with its corporate appeal to consumers.

So far, where business is concerned, Nike is profiting handsomely from its alliance with Kaepernick. According to Thomson Reuters Proprietary Research, Nike merchandise sales saw a 61 percent increase this month. There is no doubt that Nike is pleased with these sales, but because it is the world’s largest manufacturer of athletic shoes and apparel, its use of the Kaepernick ad is about something much more meaningful.

Nike is showing that it understands that sports encompass more than just the spectacle of the games we enjoy. Sports embody our way of life, what we stand for and the price we are willing to pay for what we value most.