Nike ad storms YouTube but there’s a diversity curveball
A rousing video by Nike has been praised as the ‘greatest ever’, but as the brand’s latest ad campaign goes viral, staff are unhappy.
In the 90-second long video, a discus player melts into a ballerina. Disasters on centre court morph with defeat on a footy pitch at the local oval. Over 36 split-screen images, some of the world’s biggest sporting names are paired with everyday sporting heroes — Serena Williams, Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James, on par with a young skateboarding prodigy and players in a soccer game on the street.
Sportswear giant Nike has again gone viral with one of its ad campaigns, this time with an impressively pieced-together clip calling for resilience and unity, titled “You Can’t Stop Us”.
Narrating the clip, American women’s footballer Megan Rapinoe – who has been vocal about equal pay for women in sport – says: “we know things won’t always go our way … but whatever it is, we’ll find a way.” As the video reaches a crescendo comes the defiant claim: “No matter how bad it gets, we will always come back stronger. Because nothing can stop what we can do together.”
In a hellish year that has seen much of the world socially isolated and organised sports thrown into peril thanks to bans on international travel and public gatherings, the clip is being lauded for its messages of hopefulness and resolve.
With the Tokyo Olympics delayed for 12 months and the otherwise non-stop cycle of global sport having screeched to a halt, it’s a timely message from a brand basically synonymous with sport — an industry that two years ago was estimated to be worth just under half a trillion US dollars).
Clearly it’s struck a chord: Nike’s video has had 44 million YouTube views in under a week, and over 316,000 likes on Twitter, celebrities and sportspeople alike have heaped praise on the campaign both for its messaging and diversity, some going so far as to call it the “greatest sports ad ever”.
Featuring both able-bodied and disabled athletes, and those from a range of cultural backgrounds, the clip was praised as simply “Incredible” by filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who directed the racially charged Netflix series When They See Us.
Exceptional.
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) July 31, 2020
That Nike ad is the odds on favorite to win Best Picture.
— Aditya Sood (@adityasood) July 31, 2020
Addressing some of 2020s biggest curveballs – not least the coronavirus pandemic – athletes are seen to wear face masks while workers in Hazmat suits spray down empty sports stadiums, and two children appear to play tennis “together”, albeit one in his living room, and another in her seaside town. It also touches on the Black Lives Matter movement, with football teams seen to be taking a knee, a move pioneered by NFL player-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick.
Nike is known for its viral ad campaigns, perhaps most notably a 2018 clip featuring Kaepernick which championed “crazy dreams”. That ad featured the likes of ironman Charlie “Rocket” Jabaley, who famously signed with the brand when he shed 60kg and ran three marathons after a brain tumour diagnosis, and Shaquem Griffin, who is the first one-handed NFL player to be drafted by the league. The brand marked International Women’s Day with a video calling for greater gender equality in sport in the hope that, “One day, we won’t need this day at all.” Just months before his death, the brand had put out a campaign starring the late Kobe Bryant around the work he was doing with youth and sport.
Nike’s strain of timely social commentary and rousing inspiration is clearly a well-honed formula. Behind this video and several others for the brand is famed advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, whose co-founder helped coin the now-illustrious “Just Do It” catchphrase back in the late ‘80s, and has also worked with Facebook, Microsoft and Coca Cola.
Though reports have since surfaced that a handful of Nike employees “voiced repeated objections” to the video’s release, calling on the company’s management to first publicly admit to its own shortcomings before using the video for what it considered to be mere “brand building”. The Financial Times reported that the objections were raised as part of a task force commissioned by the company to help address several perceived issues with diversity, seemingly at odds with the company’s public image of progressiveness when it comes to racial and gender equality.
John Donahoe, who began as the company’s chief executive at the start of this year, told staff in June via an internal email (which the company since made public in an effort of transparency): “Our most important priority is to get our own house in order.”
In a statement, Nike responded by saying: “Our brand has celebrated incredible black athletes and inspired millions of people all over the world by amplifying their excellence. Internally, we have made progress across our [diversity and inclusion] efforts, and we recognise that we have a lot more work to do.” With the company having tapped Felicia Mayo – formerly of Elon Musk’s Tesla – for a newly created role of chief talent, diversity and culture officer, that work apparently involves increased efforts to hire female, Black and Latino employees.
