Three things on Nike’s Colin Kaepernick campaign
Here’s my first experiment with Medium. Let’s see how it goes. Also, I know everyone and their mother talked about this, but then again this is a notepad for thoughts, so there’s three things that really hit me.
1. The celebration of short-termism.
People were quick to point out Nike’s demise because the stock value went down for a day. As everyone can see just by googling it, on the NY stock exchange the value is back up at pre-campaign levels (with the usual fluctuations a company like this has). Short-termism has been a problem with marketing for the last decade — the average lifespan of a CMO is 42 months — but with this campaign that type of thinking reached a new pinnacle.
2. The plug and play narrative of companies neutrality.
I had a — refreshingly respectful — debate with a Twitter user called Nick who cried outrage at Nike’s message for being divisive and inviting to take sides. It’s interesting how taking sides becomes wrong when the side taken goes against alleged “conservative” values. Brands should take a stand. Especially since a figure like a State leader hijacks a message and turn it into something completely different (why Kaepernick decided to kneel had nothing to do with disrespect towards the US flag or the US National Anthem). Would have Nick had the same objections had a US beer brand supported the NFL on their decision to oust Kaepernick?
3. The normalization of the abnormal.
I tweeted about how instead of outrage at the behavior of an uber-conservative clique of white men, the internet decided to disempower it with oh-so ironic memes with the likes of Britney Spears. Self-quoting is horrendous but this thing really upsets me: the constant use of irony (as a self coping mechanism?) is just as bad as conservative trolling when topics of this relevance are involved.
