Colin Kaepernick is back -- at least as far as Madison Avenue is concerned.
The former NFL quarterback, who is suing NFL owners for allegedly colluding to keep him out of the league, is one of the faces of a new Nike campaign meant to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the brand's iconic "Just Do It" motto.
The new ad, which Kaepernick shared on social media Monday afternoon, features the message: "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything."
Nike signed Kaepernick in 2011 and kept him on its endorsement roster over the years. The company had not used him in the past two years.
"We believe Colin is one of the most inspirational athletes of this generation, who has leveraged the power of sport to help move the world forward," Gino Fisanotti, Nike's vice president of brand for North America, told ESPN.
I guess Nike Corp. feels they're at a point where they've made so much money that they'll be able to financially weather the public relations storm which has already ensued.
As Jim Geraghty notes, perhaps Nike is merely looking to expand its market share to those who are typically hostile towards capitalism.
If you ever wondered what it would take to get the woke Social Justice Warrior crowd to loudly support a multinational corporation with nearly $35 billion in revenue in 2017; that pays its assembly line workers about 2.5 percent of production costs; that faces accusations that its factories bar independent inspections of working conditions; whose workers frequently faint from heat and exhaustion, and suffer wage theft, forced overtime, restrictions on their use of toilets, exposure to toxic solvents, and padlocked exit doors . . . well, apparently Colin Kaepernick is all that it takes.
Wouldn't it be ironic if Kap does somehow make a NFL roster this season and then kneels in protest of billion dollar corporations who implement questionable labor practices?
Seriously though, if SJWs had an ounce of intellectual consistency (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I slay me), they would call on Kap to use his newfound influence with Nike to look into these particular issues. Ah, but as we've witnessed for some time now, most progs deem it better to virtue signal than to actually be virtuous.
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2 comments:
Last I checked, Nike was already doing quite a brisk business in communities where Kaepernick's antics were popular. This helps them how?
And I write this as someone who actually would be quite relieved if the practice of playing the National Anthem at every.last.stinking.sportsball.event was stopped. Yeah, we've got a great country, but does it help our reputation to have a (usually) badly played song on tinny loudspeakers at the beginning of every event? Really?
Last I checked, Nike was already doing quite a brisk business in communities where Kaepernick's antics were popular.
True, particularly within the black community where, as you say, the majority support Kap's protests (I believe it's close to 70%).
My post was sort of tongue-in-cheek in that SJWs are typically comprised of lily white, virtue-signaling hipsters who would pride themselves as being some sort of Occupy Wall Street knock off. That's the demographic who claimed to loathe capitalism but are now all like "WTF, we love (multi-national billion dollar corporation) Nike now!"
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