Rita Panahi: Nike’s Colin Kaepernick advertisement a cynical exercise
NIKE’S support of activist Colin Kaepernick aims for the moral high ground but looks like a cynical corporate ploy, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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NIKE’S new marketing campaign featuring former National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick is a cynical exercise in corporate virtue-signalling.
By aligning their brand to a mediocre former player better known for his cop-hating, Castro-loving politics than for his on-field prowess, Nike has taken a significant but calculated risk.
The face of Nike’s 30th anniversary “Just Do it” advertising campaign was a bench-dweller for the San Francisco 49ers when, in 2016, he began kneeling during the national anthem before games, to protest against what he called the oppression of black people and people of colour in America — at a time when America had a black president.
EXILED NFL STAR COLIN KAEPERNICK’S NIKE CAMPAIGN
It’s a bold strategy for a sporting goods giant that relies on its image to sell sneakers, produced for a few dollars in sweatshops in Honduras and Vietnam, at inflated prices.
“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything” is the slogan, and there is a beautifully produced TV commercial, starring Kaepernick, imploring people to “dream crazy”.
Nike wants to sell you the fantasy that Kaepernick sacrificed a high-paying career as an elite athlete for the sake of his deeply held beliefs. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Plenty of NFL players who knelt during the anthem remain on playing lists because they are good enough — though their activism has caused significant damage to the league.
The NFL’s ratings are now in free fall, dropping 8 per cent in 2016 and a further 10 per cent in 2017.
And if the grim pre-season figures are any guide, there could be further falls in 2018.
The issue has been a godsend for President Donald Trump (below) who has used it to link opposition to his administration with disrespect for the US flag and anthem.
Polls show that while most Americans support the right of athletes to protest, they take a dim view of the protest itself; a Reuters poll showed three in four thought “taking a knee” was unpatriotic.
So why would Nike align its brand with an ex-player derided by a significant portion of the US population, and who is comfortable praising a communist dictator who locked up, tortured and killed thousands of political dissidents?
Well for one, there is the free publicity and the likelihood of positive press from the bulk of the media which leans Left and is receptive to Kaepernick’s activism.
Then there is the cover such action provides a company which has long battled against the damage caused to its reputation by revelations of its treatment of low-paid workers in the developing world.
In July last year, Nike faced a wave of anti-sweatshop protests, and in May this year, 11 of its executives and senior managers left the company after harassment allegations. Nike is smart enough to know moral posturing is more effective among the social justice crowd than moral behaviour.
Millennials might turn a blind eye to unscrupulous workplace practices if Nike puts a couple of hijabis and a race-obsessed multi-millionaire activist in its commercials.
Psychology professor Clay Routledge explained the corporate moralising: “We live in an era of ‘woke’ capitalism, in which companies pretend to care about social justice to sell products to people who pretend to hate capitalism.”
Research from the US, showing increasing numbers of dimwitted youngsters pining for socialism, gives a clue to what is motivating Nike’s actions.
According to a Gallup poll last month, more Americans aged 18-29 feel positively about socialism (51 per cent) than capitalism (45 per cent). Of course, none will actually move to the socialist utopia that is Venezuela.
ONE would hope those who profess to be concerned about workers’ conditions would not be so foolish as to fall for a slick, transparent marketing campaign, but that is what has happened.
For instance, Fairfax commentator Peter “Pirates” FitzSimons said Nike’s support of Kaepernick made him more inclined to buy its products, despite his previous concerns.
“Personally, I have had issues with Nike in the past, including their use of sweatshop labour in Asia to make their shoes. But this move is impressive — and I suspect clever. Yup, it has seriously pissed off huge swathes of the population, most particularly the old rednecks who support Trump,” he wrote.
Nike can also count on the patronage of ex-Iranian dictator and anti-Semite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who tweeted: “The #NFL season will start this week, unfortunately once again @Kaepernick7 is not on a NFL roster. Even though he is one of the best quarterbacks in the league.”
Never mind that under Ahmadinejad’s rule, those who “took a knee” against the Iranian regime were jailed or killed.
The most powerful reaction to Nike has come from the National Fraternal Order of Police.
It asked people not to bother with a boycott, saying: “If Nike chooses to create an ad campaign featuring a former quarterback who describes cops as ‘pigs’ and makes large donations to the family of a convicted cop killer and wanted fugitive, Joanne Chesimard, who murdered New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in cold blood in 1973, they are free to do so.”
The organisation’s national president, Chuck Canterbury, pointed out that 381 officers had been killed since 2016, and added: “Ultimately, this ad campaign will end and our nation will no longer associate ‘sacrifice’ and ‘sneakers’.
“Instead, we will again associate ‘sacrifice’ with our fellow Americans in our military and police who stand in harm’s way to protect the rest of us and our right to express ourselves.”
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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