Nike Air Max
Nike has announced that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick will be their new spokesman for Nike’s continuing “Just Do It” advertising campaign. Kaepernick is known for taking a knee before his NFL football games instead of standing during the National Anthem, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter group, to protest police killing of black civilians. Almost immediately upon Nike’s news, conservatives lashed out at Nike. However, their protest has taken some illogical, dangerous and even hilarious turns.
Astoundingly, instead of simply calling for a boycott of Nike, some conservative protesters have taken to burning and otherwise destroying the Nike products that they have already purchased. Of course, such a move doesn’t hurt Nike, which has already pocketed the money from such purchases. Indeed, some of these protesters might even “sneak” back into the store or online and order more replacement products from Nike.
Even the idea of boycotting Nike, which at least is based on some logic and principles, is of questionable value. Take a look, for instance, at the following list of companies and people that have been targets of conservative boycotts, and see how many of them are now out of business or out of work as a result:
https://twitter.com/TPVTrevor/status/1036753242082955270
You can also add The Walt Disney Company to the above list, as, in addition to now being the owner of the Star Wars properties, it has been the target of past conservative boycotts over its theme parks’ annual unofficial “Gay Day.”
Not surprisingly, the conservative protesters destroying their own property have been subject to considerable online mockery. For example, in addition to the list of former boycott targets above, there have been tweets like this:
I just wrote “NIKE” on twenty dollar bills and burned them to own the libs.
— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) September 4, 2018
Nike’s marketing department watching folks buy their socks to cut them #JustDoIt pic.twitter.com/64V8aSXisU
— Lei™️ (@lei_batiste) September 4, 2018
https://twitter.com/DuckFanAccount/status/1036775838463582208
In that spirit, we offer the following suggested Nike new products and ad campaigns:
–A new line of clothing for the next Hunger Games movie:
–A new line of shoes for the Burning Man festival.
–A new line of socks, co-branded with Fox News. They can be called Focks. Then, people can give away their Focks. They can buy 500 pairs of Focks, and have a thousand Focks to give. (h/t to Mark Sumner of the Daily Kos).
Photo by Sarah Lou, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/pX1lu8
