Kendrick Lamar and the Nike Cortez: Reclaiming Corporate Identity & Pop Culture Eyecandy
Kendrick Lamar and the Swoosh.
That’s right, Kung-Fu Kenny — hip hop/rap’s foremost champion in all things MC — is in bed with Nike, the leading man for the classic silhouette which is known to collectors and longtime Los Angeles natives to be the Nike Cortez.
I personally didn’t see it coming. I don’t think many casual observers of Kendrick or Nike saw this combination forming as it now stands, but those of us who are more pressure-sensitive on some of these things in the entertainment industry, like Rich Lopez of Complex, well, he tipped me off about something brewing in a very random Tweet, which I personally meditated on for a month:
It stemmed from this sighting of Kendrick in Seattle with good ol’ Super Bowl-winning head coach Pete Carroll in what appeared to be a preseason post-workout pic with the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks:
My point in mentioning all of this isn’t really to speak so much on Kendrick, who up to this point had been enjoying very good success with Reebok in their heritage corner of the company, also known as Reebok Classic, and leading the brand in a new place with its own retro runner model in the Ventilator.
This isn’t even so much about the Cortez, which is enjoying an unpredictable resurgence in sneaker culture at this very point in time, thanks in large part to the mastodonic machine that created the Cortez in the first place.
This is about a corporation re-appropriating narrative of a property that was built into other corporate franchise properties, or rather, a clear case in ‘reclaiming what’s mine’.
You see, some 20 years after its own release to the streets, the Cortez was known to many casual observers of footwear and most fans of pop culture and the hit show Seinfeld as ‘the George Costanzas’. This was so because George Costanza himself, the neurotic, short, balding, lying, and pitifully hilarious Manhattanite from Queens (played by the incomparable Jason Alexander) was often seen in the Cortez for a great number of seasons throughout the legendary sitcom’s nine-year run from 1989–1998.
And then again, and maybe even more famously, the cinematic classic Forrest Gump starred Tom Hanks as the titular “not a smart man” running in the Cortez. A lot. Nike themselves had to even borrow a tagline from the mammoth motion picture classic in its own company press release/pop-up just to make the connection to the shoe’s own historical importance in its 2015 re-release. From a mass popularity perspective, the Cortez was obscure (to put it mildly), much to the extent that the shoes themselves became known to a better percentage of America as Nike’s “Forrest Gump shoes”:
For those number of years that the Cortez was present and on the minds of so many during that time (particularly in the 1990s), it was likely either because you were: A) a consistently amused Seinfeld fan, B) an Angeleno loyal to that giant Swoosh and shark teeth of the silhouette some 20 years after debut, or C) a non-Angeleno, retro-sneaker maniac combing through Eastbay catalogs to plan your next outfit worthy of world domination on the street (like me — I owned my original pair of pre-retro hype Nike Cortez in 1998 when I was 14, navy and white just like Costanza himself).
Which is all to say that the model itself had slipped into hibernation, gained new life in association with other brands and characters, and sort of lost its connection to the identity of its maker. You know, sort of like how Kim Kardashian’s sex tape lost its cultural relationship with the actual Kim Kardashian.
Nike couldn’t possibly continue letting another franchise’s connection to their own product last unchecked for much longer, much less two franchises— especially if Seinfeld’s and Paramount Pictures’ relationships with the Cortez itself were pretty much coincidental in the development of the Costanza and Gump characters, as they became such unpredictably-successful cult figures in television syndication and global cinematic impact.
Nike’s pairing with Kendrick in his fronting the Cortez as a signature pitchman and partner is about NIKE, Inc. gaining more leverage in what it owns intellectually in the marketplace, while also pulling out new strategies on a model that never really died out in the first place. If anything, “Can’t-Stand-Ya” wearing the model for so many years and he becoming a pop culture icon in the process kept the model on life support, so as not to have slipped into canonical mediocrity amongst the many, many archives housed at the world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
And it doesn’t hurt to have Kendrick (himself a native Angeleno from Compton) as the signature endorser for the Swoosh factory, the former of which is looking already like an all-timer in recorded music history, speaking strictly to his critically-acclaimed work in just four albums.
It’s also a reaction to the marketplace, as sportswear rival adidas has boosted tons of its own press with impressive showings in percentage earnings with help from its own heritage house, adidas Originals; key collaborative partners in music and fashion like Pharrell Williams and Kanye West; and its superstar cushioning technology, BOOST. All three of those factors have each been used in adidas’ proverbial gift box to wrap The Brand With The Three Stripes up in a familiar, exciting, and nostalgic place that resonates with consumers who want to experience something fresh and own a piece of the culture that’s so visible right now, consumers like you and me.
And so, when you, insouciant casual shoppers, start seeing those toothy nylon runners pop up everywhere on the street, on the internetz, and in your favorite boutiques, know well that you’re seeing the corporate fruit of a product saga in the ‘This Is Our Country!’ chapter of an epic 45-year running-shoe soup, now stirring with new shoe smell.
Now, behold! the Cortez — Kendrick’s reprise.
