Nike Responds to Zion Williamson Shoe Blowout.
The Nike brand endured a very public social media crisis this year. College basketball fans everywhere witnessed a major malfunction that happened to a college basketball player who was wearing the brand's shoes. On February 20th, 2019, a big college basketball game occurred between rivals Duke and the North Carolina Tarheels. Thirty- three seconds into the game one of Duke’s star players, Zion Williamson, was injured because his Nike brand shoe fell apart while he was running on the basketball court. As seen in photos, the bottom sole of his Nike shoe completely came off. This caused him to collapse and injure himself. Williamson, who is one of Duke’s star players , was taken off the court and unable to return to play the rest of the game. Later it was determined that the injury was a mild knee sprain.
After seeing this, within minutes sports fans everywhere took to social media talking about the malfunction of the Nike brand shoe causing negative press for the brand. A lot of fans were cracking jokes at the brand joking that Duke would drop them as a sponsor of the team. Many celebrities also started tweeting about the incident as well. The most notable being former President Barack Obama and Lebron James, who both commented on the show blow out.
The next day, February 21st, 2019, Nike responded to the shoe crisis with a public statement release. “We are obviously concerned and want to wish Zion a speedy recovery. The quality and performance of our products are of utmost importance. While this is an isolated occurrence, we are working to identify the issue.” This was a good idea on Nike’s part to quickly release a statement addressing the public’s concern while wishing Williamson a speedy recovery. This quick statement release was important since Nike has had an exclusive deal with Duke University Athletics, providing their uniforms since 1992. In 2015 they signed another contract that would make them the athletic supplier for Duke for another 12 years.
While I do think Nike’s quick response was the right move, I think they could have done a better job at reporting their findings to the public after they had investigated this issue. I also think it would have been nice to feature Williamson in a commercial once he had made a full recovery. Overall I learned from this social media crisis, is that it is best to own up to your brands mistakes, and to address these mistakes as quickly as possible. Nike handled this very well and overall the brand did not take that big of a hit due to this shoe malfunction. They are still sponsoring Duke this upcoming basketball season.
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