Leave it to Nike. The waffle iron sole of inspiration. The swoosh that launched a thousand couch potatoes. A brand that stands for doing what's hard. What's inconvenient. A jolt of kick-in-the-butt to get at it, already.
Smart Nike. Smart Wieden and Kennedy (but we knew that, already.) What used to be about getting active now celebrates getting activist. With its new campaign, Nike celebrates the quiet resistance of football's kneeling conscience and links its brand to standing (or, in this case, taking a knee) for one's beliefs. No matter what.
Risky? You bet. Especially now, when tribal politics and hard lefts and rights make it practically impossible to love the color gray. Can a patriot break with convention to stand for something (that seems to him) bigger? Some say no, not ever. Some say always.
By featuring the moment of truth evidenced in the peaceful protest of a quarterback, Nike has burnished its persona with deeper and even more edgy, controversial meaning, it casts its lot with some, but not all of its public. Nike makes clear for whom it stands: the activist, the passionate, the outsider. And, most certainly, "the other." For every red state shoe burner, there's an inner city kid who reads courage and inspiration in a brand that turns out, stands for her.
Stock may have blipped, and no matter how you feel about the subject, it's awe inspiring, at least to me, to observe a company who just does it.