Source: NBC
Summary & Analysis
Yesterday, Nike debuted its new ad campaign featuring former NFL player and activist Colin Kaepernick. Around the country, people shared their anger, approval and surprise. Since first kneeling during the national anthem back in 2016 to protest police brutality, Kaepernick has been mostly ostracized by the NFL and its partners, like Nike.
Not surprisingly, the campaign was met with an overwhelming amount of condemnation. According to the New York Times, in the first 24 hours after the campaign was released, there were over 100,000 posts that contained the hashtag “#BanNike.”
Much of the criticism surrounding the campaign comes from the far right, who also criticized Kaepernick when he peacefully protested during the anthem. Tyler Merritt, veteran and CEO of Nine Line Apparel, told Fox News that the campaign was “pathetic”: “This is likely to be the single most disastrous marketing decision in the history of sports.”
President Donald Trump, of course, commented as well. “It’s a terrible message,” he said, though he acknowledged that Nike has the right to run whatever kind of ad campaign they want.
Nike’s stock dipped by 3 percent after the campaign was first released, but it is safe to assume that choosing Kaepernick to star in its 30-year campaign was a deliberate choice both politically and economically. Marketing experts at Nike surely know their audience: nearly 70 percent of their customers are younger than 35. And 60 percent of millennials are “belief buyers,” according to a 2017 study -- meaning their personal (and political) beliefs are an important factor while making purchases.
The campaign also comes less than a month after four female Nike employees filed a lawsuit against the company for ignoring sexual harassment and paying their female employees less, which violates the Equal Pay Act.
While there has certainly been a negative reaction, the New York Times reported that there has been many more positive ones on social media."Critics of the NFL protests are deliberately trying to change the narrative to deflect away from discussing the realities of violence against African Americans,” wrote the USA Today in an opinion piece. “This is why it’s necessary for critics of Kaepernick to try to spin the protests into a ‘disrespecting the troops’ narrative.” Sources:
2 comments:
It's surprising how much some people want to silence Nike. The whole ad is fairly generic, with a sporting brand using a prominent (in media) sports player and a fairly generic inspirational quote. In the worst case, this is a man and a company protesting a non-issue, which hardly seems like something to call "pathetic" or "a terrible message."
I think this image here sums up the other side of this controversy:
https://i.redd.it/v0ytndu4vioz.jpg
To follow up on one of the points made in the blog post, Nike's stock hit an all-time high on Thursday and is up almost 4 points from the initial decline following the release of Kaepernick's ad, so there clearly hasn't been a major effect from this ad, particularly in the negative direction.
The first time Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem, sparking this controversy, was actually around 2 years ago. In my experience watching sports coverage since then, there have been many developments, from military members generally supporting Kaepernick to various high-profile people discussing NFL player protests, but in general, people have not changed their opinion on Kaepernick, love him or hate him, since the beginning. Therefore, this was a relatively low-risk bit of advertising for Nike; there wasn't a huge new audience that was going to, all of a sudden, stop buying their products, and there probably wasn't going to be a long-term spike in sales, either. Just a little ad that was going to generate a lot of press and position them as the socially-conscious company of the week.
Post a Comment