For Nike, nothing brave about promoting Kap
Now that Nike has joined the fray on behalf of Colin Kaepernick, iconizing him as the face of a renewed protest culture that has tentacles reaching beyond the NFL or professional sports, the question they probably don’t want consumers asking is why the heck it took so long.
While Nike’s decision to make Kaepernick the centerpiece of its 30th anniversary “Just Do It” marketing campaign has been breathlessly analyzed and debated from every angle — just as the company intended — it is difficult to give the company too much credit for courage when, by this point, they’re simply following public sentiment rather than trying to influence it.
Wouldn’t the time for that have been two years ago when Kaepernick took his first knee? If Nike really wanted to make a difference on behalf of the causes he was championing, wouldn’t it have been more dramatic to endorse Kaepernick’s protest then, to make it known that the biggest sports apparel company in the world stood in his corner as he was being shuffled out of the NFL?
Instead, Nike all but put him in mothballs — until now.
“He needed a lot more help a year and a half ago,” said Sonny Vaccaro, the legendary former shoe company executive who rose to prominence by signing Michael Jordan to his first deal with Nike. “That’s when somebody should have stood up and said, ‘OK we’re going to do this.’
“Kaepernick has made his stand and done a wonderful job of it. I think if corporate had made a stand with him on Day 1 it would have been much more influential. Today, it’s about the company.
“I hope they make a hundred million dollars off of it. But true backers of a revolution are there on Day 1. I wish they’d have joined the first week of his protest if they believe so much in it.”
Nike siding with the protest movement Kaepernick sparked and also attempting to make millions of dollars aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s possible to profit off doing the right thing, and there’s no doubt the company carefully considered the potential to do that as well as the backlash that would come its way by giving Kaepernick such a big marketing platform.
But in a sense, it is too little, too late to be particularly meaningful beyond what it does for Nike’s image.
The truth is, Kaepernick didn’t need Nike’s help to be the face of a social justice movement. It has been obvious for well over a year that Kaepernick’s legacy as a protest figure would have a bigger impact than anything he could do on the field. In 30 years, far more people will remember Kaeper- nick for taking a knee than Nick Foles for winning a Super Bowl MVP award.
Which means Nike is doing little more here than some calculated bandwagon-jumping.
“However you’re going to look at him, however it plays out, Colin started a movement,” Vaccaro said. “They’ve paid him for two years. They could have done something the first day, and you know what? It wouldn’t have been as big a thing today. But I’m happy for him that they’re backing him and they’ll make money. That’s what companies do.”
While much of the focus since Nike’s announcement has been driven toward potential controversy and what that might mean for the company’s business, it’s worth remembering that the constituency for their products is far bigger than the NFL’s fan base, which more or less has been split down the middle on whether kneeling during the national anthem is appropriate.
So even if you’re able to make the argument that kneeling has turned fans off and hurt the league’s bottom line in some way, Nike has a different audience that doesn’t necessarily align with the political “base” President Donald Trump fires up when he tweets about the NFL.
Trump, after all, will only be president for either 21⁄ or 61⁄
2 2 more years. Nike will be selling shoes for generations, and they have a base too. Nike’s is bigger, younger, more diverse and has been activated by social issues in a way that hasn’t happened in this country since the Vietnam War. They will not view Kaepernick as a figure of antiAmericanism but as an avatar for progressive values and the fight for equal justice.
As much as Kaepernick and kneeling are divisive in an NFL context, Nike read the mood of the country and decided there was opportunity in being the company that endorsed his form of protest.