Dream Crazy

… as the face of Nike’s newest marketing campaign (Source: Kannenberg 2018, np link).

On Monday [September 3rd, he] … tweeted a black and white image of his face, his eyes staring at us, with the words ‘Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything’ etched over the top (Source: Carrington & Boykoff 2018, np link).

His Afro frames his face in a dark halo, the kind you’d see in stained-glass windows in a church (Source: Smith 2018, np link).

Below sits Nike’s Swoosh (Source: Carrington & Boykoff 2018, np link).

There are [also] black-and-white billboards … up in Times Square and San Francisco’s Union Square (Source: Zirin 2018a, np link).

[He] tweeted his Nike ad on Labor Day (Source: Pesce 2018, np link).

[This] is ironic … because Nike is a global exploiter of vulnerable workers, disproportionately young women. Lots of human rights groups have documented that Nike makes most of its clothing in Asian sweatshops (Source: Dreier 2018, np link).

Labor Day is an important shopping holiday (Source: Editorial Board 2018, np link).

… shock waves went through the sports and marketing worlds (Source: Zirin 2018b, np link).

Predictably, the controversy blew up in social media and was Twitter’s top-trending spot on Labor Day (Source: Maggiore 2018, np link).

Just two days [later] … the full commercial [was] … released (Source: Kimble 2018, np link).

… rolled out on the company’s social feeds [it] …  will air this week during the U.S. Open tennis tournament, as well as during Major League Baseball and college football games. It also will run online across various music, gaming and entertainment platforms, Nike said (Source: Anon 2018a, np link).

Nike took its support for rebellion a step further by buying airtime to debut the commercial during the NFL’s Thursday night opening game, in the forum that is expressly trying to put Kaepernick and flag controversies behind it (Source: Zirin 2018a, np link).

[It] debuts on the national airwaves during [the] NFL opener – Atlanta Falcons at Philadelphia Eagles on NBC (Source:  Freud & Daily 2018, np link).

The 2-minute spot, titled ‘Dream Crazy,’ showcases an inspirational montage of athletes overcoming adversity to chase their dreams (Source: Baysinger 2018, np link).

Through the video, several deserving individuals are given the spotlight and prove that rough beginnings can lead to greatness (Source: Vulpo 2018, np link).

[It] compiles athletes … spanning diverse sources of marginalization – race, gender, being a refugee, religion, disability – in footage that shows them training hard, competing, triumphing (Source: Bradshaw 2018, np link).

It begins with a skateboarder falling off a rail, a child with no legs on a wrestling mat, an African-American boy who couldn’t be 10 years old running down a dirt road, a young shadowboxing woman wearing hijab, a surfer, a Pop Warner football game and a blond girl playing high school football against boys (Source: Wolken 2018, np link).

The people featured include professional athletes such as Charlie Jabaley, who completed an Ironman after losing 300 pounds and recovering from brain cancer, as well as soccer player Alphonso Davies, who moved to Canada from a refugee camp and joined the national team at age 16. The video also features appearances by (US National Basketball Association] superstar LeBron James … as well as tennis player Serena Williams, among other athletes (Source: Keller 2018, np link).

Footage of Kenyan long-distance runner Eliud Kipchoge plays as Kaepernick narrates, ‘Don’t try to be the fastest runner in your school, or the fastest in the world. Be the fastest ever’ (Source: Kimble 2018, np link).

He continues, ‘Don’t picture yourself wearing OBJ’s [Odell Beckham Jr, wide receiver for the NFL team, the Cleveland Browns] jersey, picture OBJ wearing yours. Don’t settle for homecoming queen or linebacker, do both. Lose 120 pounds and become an Ironman, after beating a brain tumor’ (Source: Kimble 2018, np link).

[In the closing seconds, t]he ad cuts to Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback blacklisted for kneeling during the national anthem to protest the police killings of unarmed Black people. It is a breathtaking moment (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

[He] looks into the camera and poof, Nike becomes a symbol of justice (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

[He’s] wearing a turtleneck and a tan coat (Source: Taylor 2018, np link).

‘So don’t ask if your dreams are crazy,’ [he] says … ‘Ask if they’re crazy enough’ (Source: Keller 2018, np link).

As Kaepernick walks out of the frame, the images of the young people from earlier in the ad appear on … buildings and the words are flashed on the screen: ‘It’s only crazy until you do it. Just do it’ (Source: Wolken 2018, np link).

[In this campaign] Nike is throwing its weight behind one of the most polarizing figures in football, and America (Source: Meyersohn 2018, np link).

Nike took a side in the politically charged national anthem protest – Kaepernick’s side to be precise (Source: Trussell 2018, np link).

[But t]here is nothing in the ad about police violence or systemic racism or any of the issues that animated Kaepernick’s actions in the first place (Source: Zirin 2018a, np link).

[Nevertheless, t]he hashtags #BoycottNike and #JustBurnIt trended on Twitter, as social media was filled with videos and images of overwhelmingly white Americans of the Trumpenproletariat burning their Nike gear, slicing off their Swooshes. Conservatives predictably wrapped themselves in the comforting blanket of nationalistic militarism, and fashioned memes juxtaposing military personnel with Kaepernick, suggesting that real sacrifice was to be found in the streets of Falluja and Helmand province. President Trump, of course, weighed in on Twitter: ‘Just like the NFL, whose ratings have gone WAY DOWN, Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts. I wonder if they had any idea that it would be this way? As far as the NFL is concerned, I just find it hard to watch, and always will, until they stand for the FLAG!’ The unindicted co-conspirator in chief also told the far-right website the Daily Caller that the Nike-Kaepernick partnership was ‘a terrible message and a message that shouldn’t be sent’ (Source: Carrington & Boykoff 2018, np link).

… some sports cultural commentators suspect Nike’s famed marketing department is relishing the reaction to the company’s 30th-anniversary Just Do It campaign … How else could one interpret the company’s decision to feature former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, a frequent target of U.S. President Donald Trump’s base, on its new print ad (Source: Kwong 2018, np link)?

‘What Nike did here, by publicly embracing and supporting Colin Kaepernick the same week that the NFL regular season begins, was a powerful message,’ Shaun King, journalist and Black Lives Matter organizer [argued] … noting it was also ‘a huge risk on Nike’s part’ considering its business relationship with the NFL (Source: Pesce 2018, np link).

It is discombobulating to see a man now primarily known for his civil rights work being consecrated by Nike, a company famously accused of sweatshop abuses in the 1990s – and on Labor Day, no less (Source: Smith 2018, np link).

Some thought that Kaepernick was being hypocritical by criticising injustice against black people in the US while agreeing to be an ambassador for Nike, which had a historical reputation for treating its workers poorly. The day after the deal was announced, conservative US political commentator Ryan Fournier tweeted: … ‘Just so I’m clear: These factory workers (which are 80% female) are making NIKE’s for 20 cents an hour and working 70 to 80 hours a week, so NIKE can profit enough to pay Colin Kaepernick millions to speak out against oppression and injustice?’ … (Source: Anon 2019, np link).

‘I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour,’ he said. ‘To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder’ (Source: FitzSimons 2018, np link).

The [#TakeTheKnee] protests have divided the league, often pitting a conservative white owner base against the NFL’s mostly African-American players. At a rally in Alabama last year, President Trump said team owners should ‘get that son of a bitch off the field’ if a player knelt in protest of injustice during the anthem (Source: Purtill 2018, np link).

The US president called players who ‘disrespect’ the US flag [by taking the knee] ‘sons of bitches’ and called for them to be sacked (Source: BBC 2018, np link).

Trump has tried to twist the protest as being against the anthem and against the military, but players knew that it was directed against racism in general, and racial profiling and police brutality in particular (Source: Dreier 2018, np link).

The [team] owners voted in May to approve rules that would have required players to stand on the sideline during the anthem or remain in the locker room (Source: Purtill 2018, np link).

Colin Kaepernick is six feet four inches tall. He has one of the best touchdown-to-interception ratios in National Football League history, and he won’t turn 31 until November. Reportedly, Kaepernick is in shape, and despite his ascendance as one of America’s most visible, if taciturn, civil rights activists … he wants to continue playing quarterback. However, six seasons after emerging to lead the San Francisco 49ers within a hair’s breadth of a Super Bowl title, his professional football career appears to be over. We know why, of course. As of last week, it has now been two years since Kaepernick first took a knee on the sidelines as the national anthem played before a preseason game in San Diego. The 32 teams, led by their franchise owners and general managers, would have us believe that it is a mere coincidence that none of them have offered Kaepernick employment in the past two NFL off-seasons, and appear unlikely to do so this fall. And this, folks, is perhaps the sole reason why commissioner Roger Goodell finds himself struggling to manage a public-relations crisis over racial justice. The NFL has refused to do the one thing that probably could have ended this whole mess for them: give Kaepernick a job, or at least the realistic chance at one. This is something that the players have articulated directly to the league’s fraternity of owners. In April, the New York Times published audio of an October 2017 closed-door meeting in which safety Eric Reid, Kaepernick’s former 49ers teammate and the first to kneel alongside him, said to the team owners in the room that ‘nobody,’ meaning no owners, ‘stepped up and said ‘we support Colin’s right to do this.’ We all let him become Public Enemy No. 1 in this country, and he still doesn’t have a job.’ Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long, who is white, said in the same meeting that ‘If he was on a roster right now, all this negativeness and divisiveness could be turned into a positive.’ But none of the owners – even those with teams that would improve with Kaepernick on their rosters – addressed those points either in the meeting, or afterwards. By continuing to ignore Kaepernick, the league has justified the process by which President Trump and others have turned the quarterback into a pariah. Those chickens are now coming home to roost, as the league’s Kaepernick troubles are now worse than ever (Source: Smith 2018, np link).

Kaepernick is currently involved in a labour dispute with the NFL, a collusion grievance in which he alleges NFL owners have effectively conspired to keep him from playing because of his activism (Source: Carrington & Boykoff 2018, np link).

Nike’s move [to hire him for its 30th anniversary campaign] is good for Kaepernick. He needs a job since he’s been blacklisted by every NFL team (Source: Dreier 2018, np link).

Nike had signed Kaepernick in 2011 (Source: Pesce 2018, np link).

[So, when he] originally ‘took a knee’ in 2016, he did so wearing Nike shoes (Source: Bradshaw 2018, np link).

… but [the company] reportedly decided to renew his contract (for an undetermined amount) and run him in the ‘Just Do It’ anniversary campaign after rivals like Puma and Adidas started courting him this spring. ‘Even though he isn’t playing, he’s still connecting with a lot of people,’ a shoe industry exec told Yahoo. ‘He’s exponentially more popular, and in some cases unpopular, than he ever was in the NFL’ (Source: Pesce 2018, np link).

Nike’s relationship with the NFL is also at play here. The brand is the official uniform sponsor of the NFL … and works extensively with the league on all campaigns that use current NFL players (Source: Meyersohn 2018, np link).

… the [Nike] swoosh is on every single NFL jersey. It’s on the gear that coaches wear on the sidelines. Nike signed an 8-year extension with the league last March to continue making league uniforms and apparel (Source: Smith 2018, np link).

Industry observers say the deal [with Kaepernick] places the brand in a precarious position [because] ‘The NFL has taken a very direct stand against national anthem protests’ (Source: Adams in Purtill 2018, np link).

[So Nike] … would surely not be … doing business with the NFL, which has done its best to stifle Kaepernick’s protest movement (Source: Hunt 2018, np link).

[Yet, f]our days [after] … an arbitrator ruled that the quarterback’s collusion grievance against the league will be allowed to proceed … ESPN reported that Nike is including him as part of a new ‘Just Do It’ ad campaign marking 30 years since it launched the indelible slogan … This … may put the NFL in quite the bind (Source: Smith 2018, np link).

… by hiring Kaepernick, Nike is telling people that protest is OK: ‘Just do it!’ … (Source: Dreier 2018, np link).

[It’s] a clear endorsement of Kaepernick and the #TaketheKnee protest (Source: Purtill 2018, np link).

Nike [also promised to] … donate to Kaepernick’s ‘Know Your Rights’ campaign that instructs young people – particularly in communities of color – in how to deal with law enforcement officials (Source: Dreier 2018, np link).

The ad has put Nike in a position most companies have sought to avoid – the center of attention on a controversial issue (Source: Hamblin 2018, np link).

Nike’s engagement with – and some critics would say, exploitation of – social issues has a long history. A 1995 ‘Just Do It’ ad featured the openly HIV-positive gay athlete Ric Munoz, while the ‘If You Let Me Play’ commercial, released the same year, tugged at the heartstrings to make the case for widening women’s participation in sport. Nike frequently fronts campaigns with iconic black athletes such as Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods, with some ads not shying away from radical racial politics (Gil Scott-Heron’s 1971 song ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ even found its way into a 1994 Nike commercial, featuring NBA players). Just as Dream Crazy encourages marginalized people to excel today, in 1989 the Paralympian Craig Blanchette encouraged viewers to ‘never quit’ in a Nike television spot. Nike campaigns use rebels too – most notably their 1993 advert ‘I Am Not a Role Model’ featuring basketball anti-hero Charles Barkley, who warns: ‘just because I can dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids’ (Source: Bradshaw 2018, np link).

Since the 1920s advertising revolution, capitalism has sold commodities by associating them with an identity. Edward Bernays, ‘the father of public relations,’ began this with World War I propaganda and then sold his ‘psychological warfare’ to American companies. He framed their products not as things to answer needs but as symbols to satisfy desires. He wrote in his 1928 book Propaganda, ‘A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because (a person) has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol.’ Advertising sold people symbols like instant food, which signified modern convenience, or soap ‘scientifically’ guaranteed to kill germs. Each generation found its desire for safety or upward mobility or rebellion quickly commodified. In the television series Mad Men, 1960s ad executive Don Draper’s meditation led to the ‘I Like to Buy the World a Coke’ commercial. A Coke is just corn syrup and water in a bottle, but in the alchemy of advertising, it was reborn as a symbol of the Hippie Counter Culture (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

Six decades after the release of Bernays’s book, Nike tapped into his propaganda model for its 1988 Just Do It campaign. It made sneakers into symbols of American independence. The first ad showed an 80-year-old man cheerfully jogging the Golden Gate Bridge. Nike sold an athletic … story where normal people lift themselves up with extreme effort. The human spirit shined through sweat-soaked faces (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

The Nike formula of associating with rebellious, radical and revolutionary issues emerged during the planning for a major campaign in 1987 designed to recover market share from Reebok whose successful aerobics shoes, largely sold to women exercisers, caught the patriarchal Nike unprepared. Nike, having previously eschewed television advertising, hired Wieden+Kennedy, a small Portland-based creative agency, to develop its first major TV campaign. In pre-production, Nike anticipated a straightforward product-oriented campaign. But Wieden+Kennedy had another idea: structuring the ad around the Beatles’s 1968 song ‘Revolution’, suggesting a revolution around the way people exercised. The ad mixed images of Nike athletes like John McEnroe with ordinary people, sometimes clowning around, while participating in various sports. There are white and black people, men, women, and a toddler who looks like he is discovering what it is like to run for the first time. The Revolution ad aspired to speak to all – old, and very young, world class athletes and sports hobbyists – tying them together in an ideal of revolution through sports and exercise. In obtaining permission to use ‘Revolution’, the ad was the only time an original Beatles song was allowed in an advert. The outcome was strikingly similar to Dream Crazy; the use of the Beatles’s ‘Revolution’ infuriated many consumers who understood the ad as betraying the song’s radical history (thus imbuing the song with a history it never had). Like now, consumers destroyed Nike paraphernalia and advised Nike that they would be boycotted evermore. Significant media commentary – mostly highly disapproving – piled up. One critic said that the ad was an example of ‘when rock idealism met cold-eyed greed’. And the Beatles’s Apple Records label sued Nike and Weiden+Kennedy in what was almost certainly a ‘nuisance lawsuit’ designed to garner public disapproval. And yet, like now, Nike profits soared, not just allowing them to recover their lost market share from Reebok, but also propelling them into the stratosphere where they have maintained their position as not just a blue-chip company, but also one of the most iconic brands of our age. The Revolution ad also introduced Nike as a brand who, on the one hand, spoke to social justice issues, while on the other drawing critical attention to its manipulation of poor consumers, exploitation of black culture, and sweatshop labour abuses (Source: Bradshaw 2018, np link).

The corporation projecting Kaepernick’s voice … has a decades-long record of taking rebel athletes, marketing their appeal, but stripping their rebellion of all content. … Nike told us that John McEnroe was a Rebel With a Cause, without ever telling us exactly what that cause happened to be. Nike gave us Tiger Woods as some kind of political trailblazer, even though the actual Tiger Woods wanted no part of the political responsibility that came with his politicized brand (Source: Zirin 2018a, np link).

Historically, capitalism’s troubling allure has captured many black dynamos. The Hall of Famer Charles Barkley indignantly blared in a Nike campaign, ‘I’m not your role model.’ The director Spike Lee, known for acclaimed films depicting black life and its rigors, was never asked to speak on the issues that elevated his profile while Nike whisked him into ads with Michael Jordan. Jordan – infamous for his reticence regarding social issues – was Nike’s poster child, allegedly saying ‘Republicans buy sneakers, too’ in Sam Smith’s 1995 book Second Coming (Source: Tynes 2018, np link).

Nike knew what it was doing when it picked Kaepernick … Like any billion-dollar brand, [it] employs a lot of people, many of whom are experts in marketing (Source: Banet-Weiser 2018, np link).

The Kaepernick ad almost didn’t happen because executives didn’t want to anger the NFL by maintaining a relationship with the player (Source: Tode 2018, np link).

A report by the New York Times this week says it was Portland ad agency Wieden + Kennedy that pressured Nike to make the quarterback the center of [the] ad campaign. … The story says Nike nearly dropped Kaepernick from its roster of endorsers last year, until one executive quashed that idea. It also says Wieden + Kennedy, which manages the Nike account from Portland’s Pearl District, came to the shoe giant this year with an idea for how to get Kaepernick off the bench. ‘The advertising firm, which forged its reputation back in the 1980s when it crafted Nike’s Michael Jordan ads with Spike Lee, made it clear that Kaepernick could provide real value,’ the Times story says. ‘With the NFL set to become a less important partner and its deal with the league locked up until 2028, Nike decided to listen’ (Source: Mesh 2018, np link).

Announcing the [30th anniversary ‘Just Do It’] campaign, Gino Fisanotti, Nike’s vice-president of brand, said: ‘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. We wanted to energise its meaning and introduce ‘Just Do It’ to a new generation of athletes’ (Source: Kelner 2018, np link).

Nike has made a strategic decision about what matters to its core and future audience. As with any celebrity endorsement, it has aligned with an ambassador that represents its brand idea but critically connects that idea to its core target audience (Source: Hayman 2018, np link).

But selecting … [Kaepernick] as the face of its new global advertising campaign is its most divisive move (Source: Kelner 2018, np link).

Kaepernick has been a polarising figure since 2016 (Source: Kelner 2018, np link).

Nike … made a bet on an audience (Source: Hayman 2018, np link).

[It] knew perfectly well that the ad would enrage some consumers who have been vocal about their anger around NFL players kneeling in protest (Source: Banet-Weiser 2018, np link).

[But t]he Nike customer base is not necessarily the same as the mostly white NFL audience (Source: Smith 2018, np link).

Research shows that Colin Kaepernick is more popular with Nike customers (46%) than with the general public (34%) (Source: Merriam in Anon nd, np link).

Social justice particularly resonates with Nike’s target customer (Source: Maggiore 2018, np link).

The Nike demographic boasts the younger and more ethnically diverse sections of the population who have been on Kaepernick’s side from the start and my pound to your peanut says they will be more inclined to buy Nike (Source: Maggiore 2018, np link).

Nike … knew that the campaign would further solidify it as a socially progressive company, which is important for many of its younger consumers … [who] … represent the company’s future customers (Source: Banet-Weiser 2018, np link).

Its courting of controversy appears to have been a commercial calculation for a company that has lost its grip on the teen demographic, which no longer sees it as the arbiter of cutting-edge sneaker style. Nike likely wants to tap into a younger, more racially diverse market, [Stephen] Mosher … a sports culture and media analyst at Ithaca College in New York … said. ‘They’ll lose 45-year-old white guys and pick up 20-somethings who were thinking Nike is not cool.’ What the Nike naysayers aren’t grasping, according to the Bleacher Report’s NFL columnist Mike Freeman, is that the Kaepernick campaign is entirely worth the risk for a company that has built its reputation on backing winners. ‘For every Nike boycotter,’ Freeman wrote on Twitter, ‘there will be five people who will purposely buy Nike merchandise’ (Source: Kwong 2018, np link).

And so … media commentary assesses Nike’s intentions … : [are] they … ‘wokewashing’ by cynically co-opting or appropriating radical discourse, or … genuinely committed to the social movements they invoke (Source: Bradshaw 2018, np link)?

Kaepernick’s … ad … [has been] praised from the left for giving Kaepernick a platform to continue speaking out against police brutality and racial injustice, and vilified from the right by the likes of [Fox talk show host] Sean Hannity, who remains determined to cast Kaepernick as unpatriotic and disrespectful (Source: Hunt 2018, np link).

Ironically, those conservative critics of Nike using Colin Kaepernick are now the ones highlighting the company’s admitted past use of sweatshop working conditions and poor labour relations and drawing attention to the newer allegations (Source: Boyd 2018, np link).

[But, i]n some ways … Nike is protected from backlash. The company has built itself around its star athletes, many of whom are African-American. Top Nike athletes, including LeBron James and Serena Williams, have publicly backed Kaepernick and his right to protest. On Saturday, Williams praised Kaepernick and former 49ers’ defensive back Eric Reid … ‘I think every athlete, every human, and definitely every African-American should be completely grateful and honored how Colin and Eric are doing so much more for the greater good,’ she said (Source: Meyersohn 2018, np link).

Ironic, isn’t it, that Kaepernick campaign is another leg of [Nike’s] ‘Equality Campaign’ started a year ago. The slogan was ‘Worth should outshine color.’ Guess that depends on what color. Certainly not yellow. Or brown. It’s people of color that make Nike’s stuff. And the company determines their worth by their financial desperation – not their production. Those workers generated $36.5 billion in total revenue and $16 billion in profits for the company, which pays many of them below the poverty line of their home countries. Ironic, too, is that Nike celebrates – and markets – athlete activists like Lebron James and New Jersey fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad but dismisses activists looking into its labor practices (Source: Di Ionno 2018, np link).

Nike has often been on the wrong side of social-justice movements, and in the past used its considerable power and influence to crush any protest movement that undermined the company’s bottom line. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, underage workers toiled in Indonesian factories producing Nike shoes; at factories in China, workers claimed they were coerced into putting in excessive overtime in order to meet Nike’s demanding production schedule; and in Vietnamese factories, workers faced dangerous conditions later documented by independent auditors from Ernst & Young. In the summer of 1997, when Nguyen Thi Thu Phuong died while making a pair of Nike shoes at a factory in Vietnam, the company’s response was to boldly claim: ‘We don’t make shoes.’ This was a shockingly disingenuous statement from a company whose founder would later call his memoir Shoe Dog (Source: Hunt 2018, np link).

While reporting a book about Nike, I learned that during the spring of 2000, [its co-founder and then CEO Phil] Knight sought to crush a growing campus-protest movement against sweatshop labor by quashing lucrative equipment and apparel deals with the University of Oregon and the University of Michigan (Source: Hunt 2018, np link).

[He] cancelled a donation of 30 million USD to the University of Oregon after they revealed that they were joining [the labor rights monitoring group the Workers Rights Consortium] (Source: Brandberg, Myrefelt Norlinger & Ngo 2020, p.13 link).

Behind closed doors, the billionaire resorted to more personal means of retribution, including withholding donations from a nonprofit organization run by the University of Oregon president, Dave Frohnmayer (Source: Hunt 2018, np link).

When Nike did at last make concessions to labor unions at some of the factories making its shoes, it was only because of sustained efforts from labor and human-rights organizations, such as the Worker Rights Consortium. In the wake of this defeat, after years of ignoring or denying accusations that it had relied on sweatshop labor, Nike learned how to market itself as a good corporation with noble intentions, which were stymied only by its naïveté. It was a company trapped by its own humble beginnings, unaware of the immense power it had accrued, according to a May 2001 statement issued by Nike’s corporate and social responsibility manager, Harsh Saini. ‘We were a bunch of shoe geeks who expanded so much without thinking of being socially responsible that we went from being a very sexy brand name to suddenly becoming the poster boy for everything bad in manufacturing,’ Saini said (Source: Hunt 2018, np link).

In 2005, protests erupted at universities across the United States, demanding Nike and other big companies to stop using sweatshops to make their products. The short documentary [by Jim Keady called] Behind the Swoosh investigates what it is like to work in a sweatshop and what countries are most susceptible to creating them. Most Nike sweatshops are located in countries we often see as ‘poorer’ like Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam, and Mexico but can also be found in the United States, Australia, and Canada. In these sweatshops, workers are forced to work long hours while making around twenty cents an hour. Working conditions are often hazardous and overcrowded (Source: Hendrix 2018, np link).

You’ve probably heard this word before: sweatshop. But what is a sweatshop? It’s generally thought to be a factory that violates labor laws. The work is usually dangerous and difficult, resulting in health problems and injuries. Sweatshops originated in the 1830s and 40s as a cheap and quick way to make clothing. Around 1911, the public’s perception of sweatshops began to change. While unions, fire and workplace safety regulations, minimum wage, and labor laws tried to eliminate sweatshops, the ugly truth of the matter is that they still exist today. As early as the 1970s, Nike was accused of using sweatshops to mass produce their products. Originally, Nike ran sweatshops in China and South Korea, but as these countries’ economies grew, the shops lost workers to higher paying jobs, causing Nike to move to areas where they could find cheaper labor. Although it is unknown how many Nike sweatshops exist, they are most prominent throughout Asia and Central America (Source: Hendrix 2018, np link).

Nike’s biggest excuse over the years has been that because they do not own the subcontracted factories they cannot be held accountable for their conditions, which is a pretty irresponsible way to approach the subject. This means that Nike does not build the sweatshop and hire the workers, they employ the entire sweatshop to make their merchandise (Source: Hendrix 2018, np link).

According to Nike’s website they have outsourced their production to 523 factories in 41 countries employing a total of about one million workers (Source: Brandberg, Myrefelt Norlinger & Ngo 2020, p.13 link).

The Workers’ Rights Consortium (WRC) in Washington and the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) have both run into Nike’s unwillingness to continuing to cooperate with monitoring of overseas working conditions, ending a 12-year practice in 2015 (Source: Di Ionno 2018, np link).

In 2015, [Nike’s own] Sustainable Business Report included a Code of Conduct, which has clauses on working hours, child labour and worker discrimination. Nike received an Ethical Consumer middle rating for supply chain management in response to these growing commitments. However, it continues to deny its garment workers a living wage. A recent report by Clean Clothes Campaign claimed that factory workers today receive even less of Nike profits than they did in the 1990s. The ‘Foul Play’ report claims that ‘the share of these costs that ends up in a worker’s pocket is now a staggering 30% less than in the early 1990s’ (Source: Anon 2018b, np link).

Coincidentally or not, Nike’s Kaepernick marketing campaign comes at a time when the company is batting off allegations from the United Students Against Sweatshops grouping about the employment conditions in Nike factories in developing countries (Source: Boyd 2018, np link).

… the brand faced a new wave of sweatshop accusations in Vietnam and Honduras last summer, even after its spent the past two decades upgrading its factory practices and bringing more transparency to its overseas production after it was called out for running sweatshops in the 90s (Source: Pesce 2018, np link).

In 2016 the WRC were granted access to the Hansae factory in Vietnam after complaints, they revealed that Nike used this factory where several violations of labor standards had taken place, including wage theft, forced overtime, verbal abuse, denial of bathroom breaks and sick leave … As a response Nike put sanctions on this specific factory and reduced their share from 9% to 3% of the factory’s production (Source: Brandberg, Myrefelt Norlinger & Ngo 2020, p.13 link).

In July 2017, workers and students held a Global Day of Action Against Nike after … [the] Workers Rights Consortium got inside a Nike plant in Hansae, Vietnam, and found wage theft, padlocked doors and workers fainting from heat. In San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the SITRASTAR union protested outside of the Nike factory and store after the company stopped production at their factory. More than 350 union members were jobless. ‘If there is no peace for us,’ union leader Waldin Reyes shouted, ‘Let there be no peace for them’ (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

… last year when students and activists around the world participated in a day of protest against Nike. Organized by United Students Against Sweatshops, demonstrators alleged that workers in Malaysia suffered wage garnishment and verbal abuse, and labored for hours in temperatures well over the legal limit of 90 degrees (Source: Kashatus 2018, np link).

[This] shows the double bind of Global South workers. They have to fight for higher pay and humane conditions and fight to keep the sweatshops. Without them, they’d plummet into severe poverty. Unlike the customers buying Nike for an imaginary status of rebellion, here are people fighting for a very real goal: survival (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

‘Nike should be treated as enemies, in the same manner we view armies and governments that perpetrate human rights violations,’ said 1996 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jose Ramos-Horta in discussing working conditions in Indonesia (Source: Di Ionno 2018, np link).

It is also important to recognize that in May Nike had a slew of accusations regarding sexual assault, according to the New York Times (Source: Sabbaghian 2018, np link).

At the Nike headquarters in Oregon, it was revealed that the working environment had been considered toxic for women, after a survey was carried out regarding sexual harassment and gender discrimination (Source: Brandberg, Myrefelt Norlinger & Ngo 2020, p.13 link).

… the New York Times … report … detailed how staff outings ended up at strip clubs, reported how a boss at the company tried to forcibly kiss a female subordinate and how women at the company were ‘made to feel marginalised and were largely excluded from crucial divisions’ (Source: Boyd 2018, np link).

Eleven high-profile executives and senior managers have stepped [down] since the New York Times reported … that female workers in the company’s Oregon headquarters were being sexual harassed, marginalized in meetings and passed over for promotions (Source: Pesce 2018, np link).

Knight [also] underwrites candidates from the very Republican Party that has been demonizing Colin Kaepernick (Source: Zirin 2018a, np link).

[He] gave $500,000 in 2017 to Oregon Republican gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler (Source: Zirin 2018b, np link).

In 2016, [he] gave $330,000 to Republicans in Oregon and over $100,000 for Republicans nationally. The organization has headquarters in Donald Trump’s towers in New York, which California grassroots groups harangued them for. The linkage should yield skepticism rather than blanket acceptance (Source: Tynes 2018, np link).

As a billion dollar corporate behemoth, fixated on their stock price and bottom line, Nike would … have been aware of the transformative effects of what is known as ‘woke-washing’. As in ‘green-washing’ – the deceptive use by corporations to promote the perception that their products are environmentally friendly, this new marketing spin cycle … sees corporations eager to tell us about their progressive values as part of their advertising pitch. But you’re not supposed to call it woke-washing – it’s pejorative. ‘Compassionate Capitalism’ has a softer, fluffier feel to it (Source: Boyd 2018, np link).

Woke-washing wouldn’t rinse out [all] the stains, [so] instead the company went straight for the commodity activism play – the belief that social change can be achieved through patterns of consumption. Colin Kaepernick’s initial protest was about racial injustice – a centuries old story of discrimination and prejudice from the abolition of slavery to the Jim Crow laws via lynchings and beatings to the march from Selma to Montgomery and on to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. Nike have compressed all this into an advertising image being used to sell €150 sneakers. A corporate swoosh tick that erases history and maximises profit (Source: Boyd 2018, np link).

Nike is [making] a profit off social justice and people’s desire to do something for a cause (Source: Banet-Weiser 2018, np link).

Nike is focused on winning the long game, even as it takes some losses for now. ‘We are living in an important cultural moment, and if brands choose to speak to that, they will either end up on the right side of history or the wrong side,’ Sakita Holley, public relations strategist and CEO of House of Success PR, told [us]. ‘Yes, Nike may alienate some of their customers and potentially piss off brand partners such as the NFL, but ultimately this moment will pass. And they’ll gain equity and respect from their core consumers, the athletes themselves and the communities they come from who support them or their cause’ (Source: Pesce 2018, np link).

Kaepernick gets paid to represent his movement, which Nike uses to sell sneakers that are manufactured in Vietnamese sweatshops, to Americans who think they’re ‘woke’. … Everything about this is a mediated mind fuck (Source: Phetasy 2018, np link).

[Kaepernick’s ad] sent social media into paroxysms of confusion. Liberals and left-wing commentators found themselves largely praising the brave decision by the global sneaker behemoth, promising to buy some Nike products to show support for the move. Others on the left stopped short of singing Nike’s praises but saw it as a victory for Kaepernick: he stood by his principles and now has a sweet shoe deal to show for it, which for many, further legitimizes his decision to protest. On the right, there were calls for demonstrations against the sneaker company. #BoycottNike trended on Twitter. Scenes of people burning their sneakers or cutting the swooshes off of their clothes also went viral (Source: Zirin 2018b, np link).

People are projecting their own beliefs, insecurities, and rationalities onto this campaign, when in fact, it is nothing more than a contrived and disingenuous sales pitch. … These emotional machinations are precisely what advertising is for (Source: Mattis 2018, np link).

I don’t know what’s funnier; Nike choosing Colin Kaepernick, a failure who hasn’t even played for 2 years to be the face of its campaign, or liberals falling all over themselves to worship a giant transnational corporation infamous for child labor and mistreating workers (Source: @PrisonPlanet 2018, np link).

Left in 2017: Nike is a horrible, unethical company that exploits its sweatshop workers. Left in 2018: Nike so woke! Totally buying Nike now <3 <3 <3 #Kaepernick #JustDoIt #hypocrisy (Source: @raguileramx 2018, np link).

NIKE: *uses child labor to make shoes* REPUBLICANS: that’s the free market at work  NIKE: *puts Colin Kaepernick in a commercial* REPUBLICANS: BURN THE EVIL CORPORATION TO THE GROUND (Source: @BuckyIsotope 2018, np link).

On the flip side. Nike *uses child labor to make shoes*. Democrats *Nike just doesn’t rely on child labor, [it] locks people in factories who kill themself  / jump out windows and hides profits in Tax Havens. Nike *puts Colin Kaepernick in a commercial*. Democrats *Yas Queen Yas We Love Nike* (Source: @GnarlieStCloud 2018, np link).

July 2018: Nike enjoys broad support despite foreign child labor violations, probable tax evasion, and poor workmanship. To name a few. September 2018: white folks boycott Nike because they’re mad about @Kaepernick7 whom they still don’t understand. #TakeAKnee (Source: @jay_mccrea 2018, np link).

my favorite thing about 2018 is the white people mad at nike for their support of kaepernick … not their overseas production plants using child labor, not their corporate greed, but their support of someone trying to get the basic human rights the whites were born into … smh (Source: @kingtont77 2018, np link).

Nike has chosen their side in this war (Source: Anon in Purtill 2018, np link).

Yup, it has seriously pissed off huge swathes of the population, most particularly the old red-necks who support Trump (Source: Maggiore 2018, np link).

Hmmm … So Nike thinks they can let us go … Ummm … Us #MAGA customers decided to boycott Nike … #BoycottNike (Source: @Sassy4Trump 2018, np link).

[The campaign’s] critics included country musician John Rich, who posted a photo showing that his soundman had cut the Nike swoosh off his socks in protest (Source: Meyersohn 2018, np link).

Our Soundman just cut the Nike swoosh off his socks. Former marine. Get ready @Nike multiply that by the millions (Source: @johnrich 2018, np link).

Rich, part of the duo Big & Rich and a former contestant of President Donald Trump’s reality show The Celebrity Apprentice, said he supported the right to protest but Nike lost his support when it endorsed Kaepernick (Source: Anon 2018c, np link).

[Former Republican Congresswoman and new USA Gymnastics coach Mary] Bono tweeted a of photo of herself taking a marker to the ‘Swoosh’ on her own sneakers and writing: ‘Playing in a charity golf tournament raising money for our nation’s Special Forces operators and their families. Unfortunately had these shoes in my bag. Luckily I had a marker in my bag too …’ wrote Bono, who also re-tweeted a response that said ‘#BoycottNike’ (Source: Finn 2018, np link).

That reminds me, I need to go buy some more Nike gear today. Thanks, Mary (Source: @HughManatee689 2018, np link).

Olympic [gymnastics] champion Simone Biles has expressed her dismay about … Mary Bono[’s tweet]. … Biles retweeted [it] and wrote: ‘*mouth drop* don’t worry, it’s not like we needed a smarter usa gymnastics president or any sponsors or anything.’ Bono deleted her tweet about five hours later, saying she regretted the post and respects ‘everyone’s views & fundamental right to express them’ (Source: Anon 2018g, np link).

‘So that’s how it’s gonna be, Nike,’ a middle-age bearded white man from Magnolia, Texas, intones in a southern drawl in one of [the #boycottnike] videos [posted on social media]. The camera shows a box of Nikes in a cold fire pit. ‘I spent my whole life as a Nike man. I had Jordans, I had Vandals back in the day. Not no more though. You going to put that kneeling jackass on the cover or your advertisement? Well no. I’m done with you. I’m gonna burn your shoes up how you gonna like that?’ … (Source: Purtill 2018, np link).

To anybody who is planning on burning their size 13 Nike’s, please mail them to me and I will really make sure they get burned up. Please only send me newer, cleaner, less used pairs …. to burn. Tell all your friends … I will burn all the size 13’s to the ground (Source: @WhatJustOpened 2018, np link).

I’m going to enjoy the howling of the racist shoe-burners … while I can (Source: @ComradeCalifor1 2018, np link).

I am so mad, I am gonna go buy more Nikes and burn them all! That’ll show Nike (Source: FluffyBunnyFeet 2018, np link)!

‘I’m going to … burn all my Nike gear and never buy Nike again,’ a white man says in [another] protest video… Behind him is a heap of clothes in a backyard pizza oven. ‘When you do disrespect the flag, when you disrespect the anthem, you’re not protesting against racism. What you’re doing is you are disrespecting the military, those who have fought and died to protect and make this country free. I’m sorry you should have protested like everybody else and picked up a sign or something’ (Source: Purtill 2018, np link).

Reminder: Colin Kaepernick wasn’t protesting the flag. He was protesting how black people are treated in the U.S. –  including by police (Source: @blackvoices, 2018, np link).

I’ve literally had people arguing with me saying ‘those Soldiers are fighting for our freedom’ like [Kaepernick’s] protesting the war (Source: @FreedomBlocks 2018, np link).

As a Veteran I have one thing to say to Nike and Kaepernick: THANK YOU (Source: Cowherd 2018, np link)!!!

The Sheriff in Union County, Arkansas is putting Nike t-shirts on people they arrest and making them wear them during mugshots. Source says it is to mock Nike and Colin Kaepernick. Disgusting. (Source: @shaunking, 2018, np link). 

That Sheriff really hates Americans who want to end systemic racism (Source: @arg7822 2018, np link).

It is proving @Kaepernick7 point (Source: @kil4them 2018, np link).

Can someone project a swoosh on the police station. That’d be cool! I’m sure it would irritate the shit out of that sheriff (Source: @c4ronk 2018, np link).

Ooooo…. thats good. Can we do this to all police / sheriff stations? Like a Batman signal (Source: @justjeanmarie 2018, np link).

so they’ve obviously given up on the boycott then (Source: @Ambrose1879 2018, np link).

This is stupid on so many levels. Boycotting Nike by buying Nike? Not to mention this dude should be removed from an elected position if the apparel was purchased with tax payer dollars (Source: @ErikStompi 2018, np link).

They should hijack the boycott and change it to make it about the sweatshops. That would be hilarious (Source: KKlear 2018, np link).

Seems #Nike & #ColinKaepernick don’t like the #US Flag however ok they exploit children, persons of color etc. for profit. #Google #Nike #Sweatshop #Exploit #MAGA (Source: @RealCoyotes 2018, np link).

[Why say:] ‘We stand for equality’ [but then say] ‘make those shoes for $3.00 a day 9 year old'[?] how do you not get this[?] Have you ever seen the Nike video (Source: @blakespop 2018, np link)[?]

You’ve got children in sweatshops making your shoes all over the world, and then you got [African American basketball legend] LeBron [James] putting them on because they say ‘equality’ so a bunch of people here will buy them. They’ll make a bunch of money, but is equality what they’re really striving for? Or are they just really trying to sell some sneakers (Source: Rodriguez in Anon 2018d, np link)?

It’s pretty hypocritical for people who never cared about Nike’s treatment of workers before to discover not only their own social consciences but to worry about Kaepernick’s (Source: Lynch 2018, np link)?

… now you decided against child labor now that kaepernick is doing Nike ads but was ok with it before [?] oh ok (Source: @jjanaria 2018, np link)!

Any other company that deals with ‘sweatshop’ practices you want to call out? Of course you don’t. The voice of the resistance against police brutality against non-poc is being championed and NOW you want to speak up (Source: @chielfcalhoun 2018, np link)?

I think that pretty well tells you the motivation of said boycott (Source: @SeanRossSapp 2018, np link).

… boycotting [Nike] simply for endorsing Colin Kaepernick is extremely anti-black and racist (Source: @itsazul_ 2018, np link).

Colin Kaepernick is a bad brotha! He now has racists caring about Chinese children working in sweat shops! The same sweat shops they didn’t care about when they were buying there MAGA hats, Trump ties, and Ivanka clothing (Source: @Estacia_Sasa 2018n np link)!

Wait do they really produce clothes in the same place everyone else does (Source: @kekoanokapono 2018, np link)!!!!???

Nike has all their shoes made in China or other countries in Asia so they don’t have to pay decent wages to Americans (Source: theresavarga 2018, np link).

Don’t buy anything Nike. I don’t, not [because] they are made someplace else to make a large profit … [but because] they don’t fit right. I bu[y] new balance or Asics. Don’t care where they are made, they are comfortable to me (Source: @carl_oneil 2018, np link).

Hey, Nike … kiss my &ss!  I will never buy your over-hyped shoes again. Adidas, here I come (Source: @Cockyhobbit 2018, np link).

… buy @Adiddas @NewBalance @UnderArmour @converse @AscicsShoes (Source: @chevalierjd 2018, np link).

Nike doesn’t need you hillbillies. You’re a minority (Source: @realphilhendrie 2018, np link).

[Nike sees this campaign] as a way to endear themselves to one of their largest bases of customers – young black men – to sell more sneakers. And they are banking on capturing the anti-Trump movement with this move. Again, to sell more sneakers. This is ’cause marketing’ 101 (Source: Keady 2018, np link)

It’s not ‘Wear Nike and be like Mike’ it’s now ‘Wear Nike and piss off Trump’ (Source: Purtill 2018, np link).

You endorse a controversial ‘hero’ such as Kaepernick, and immediately appear as if you’re ‘taking a stance’. Meanwhile, Kaepernick supporters watch, in mass, as far right-wing idiots burn their Nike paraphernalia … So how do you respond? You make sure that sh*t sells out. You have to make sure the now poor and vulnerable Nike is not scared from their former fans burning Nike logos over this decision. You have to make sure Nike knows this was a good decision. You have to show those racists, through nothing but your consumption, that you are a Kaepernick fan. So you purchase their Kaepernick gear, en mass (Source: Katebi 2018, np link).

Not a big fan of Nike products, but regardless of how convoluted this ad may or may not be, social responsibility is something I greatly respect from big influential brands, and for that, this week, I will be purchasing a Nike product just to support their message (Source: Reef K 2018, np link).

#NIKE #CONGRATS ON STANDING UP FOR COLIN KAEPERNICK, BLACK LIVES MATTER & MINORITIES WORLD WIDE. … I applaud NIKE 4 standing up for minorities who have been unjustly murdered by PD’s. I respect all PD’s who are respectable (Source: @manuelingardena 2018, np link).

To be sure, the United States continues to struggle with issues of race and police brutality, but those problems can only be worsened by a spoiled former NFL player and a multi-billion-dollar corporation who are exploiting the suffering of others for their own financial again (Source: Kashatus 2018, np link).

Rad @Nike is backing @Kaepernick7 rn, but I wish they’d also back the garment workers of color they exploit in their sweatshops, bc you know they also exist & backing dope ppl doesn’t justify ur violence abroad. If we pro justice for ppl of color, let’s not be exclusive (Source: @hodakatebi 2018, np link).

One might also say, rad @Kaepernick7 is protesting domestic racism and police violence, but I wish he’d also back the garment workers of color @Nike exploits in their sweatshops, bc you know they also exist. If we [pro] justice for ppl of color, let’s not be exclusive (Source: @smileyrob68 2008, np link).

What happens when a Vietnamese shoe maker takes a knee one the Nike factory floor (Source: @cogmeyer 2018, np link)?

When they fight for better wages or working conditions, their heroism does not make them eligible to become rebels, mythologized in Nike’s ads (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

… a struggle involving millions of people won’t be made into any commercial (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

Vietnamese less-than-minimum-wage slaves don’t make for cool branding (Source: Barnes 2018, np link).

Maybe now [Kaepernick will] take a knee for Nike child labourers in Indonesia (Source: Draper 2018, np link).

Will [he] speak out about @Nike’s use of child labor (Source: @OddsShark 2018, np link)?

Did Kaepernick know that Nike uses sweatshops (Source: Anon 2018e, np link)?

Of course he knows. Everyone knows it’s no secret (Source: Chang 2018, np link).

I am just trying to figure out how a social activist can sign a deal with a corporation that is the poster child of the last 30 years for violating human rights in numerous countries around the world with their sweatshops. … It’s a total joke (Source: Leavitt 2018, np link).

The whole Nike sweatshop thing is really over blown. Nike factories give jobs to people who otherwise wouldn’t have any job (Source: @JohnDoe18015 2018, np link).

Nike has made those people’s lives better, and you labelling their factories as sweatshops is misinformation. Might I recommend Phil Knight’s book #shoedog as I love @Nike and what the Knight’s have done to make this world a better place (Source: @McTrotszky 2018, np link).

Kaepernick the fake social justice warrior only cares about his paycheck (Source: Chang 2018, np link).

Nike, like the ad, and like Kaep, are all posers. They’re not making a message or taking a stand by taking a knee, they’re just conning us into thinking they are more than what they are (Source: tontogoldstein81 2018, np link).

Kaepernick is a hypocrite for taking the millions that came his way over the first two years of [his Nike] contract as well as for benefitting from the other opportunities afforded to him as a pro athlete and then having the audacity to disrespect this country and exploit the Black Lives Matter movement to keep his name in the headlines (Source: Kashatus 2018, np link).

[Kaepernick’s] appointment as a Nike spokesperson in no way altered the fragility of black life in the United States – not to mention the debased conditions of Nike’s sweatshop labourers abroad (Source: Matlon 2019, p.83).

So I guess Colin should just fade away and die broke I guess thus making sure he’ll be swept under the rug by the NFL who will institute new laws to prevent people like him from speaking out (Source: al-saqr 2018, np link).

I love Colin Kaepernick and I’m glad he’s getting paid (Source: @benigma2017 2018a, np link).

He has every right to earn a living, especially since the NFL, whether it’s collusion or not, hasn’t allowed him to pursue his craft (Source: Zirin 2018a, np link).

Kaepernick has spent the past two years being showered with hatred and death threats, vilified on social media and from the presidential bully pulpit. In the last year, he has given away over a million dollars of his own money. He has been unable to earn a living during the prime years of his career. It is a great thing that he is actually going to earn an income and receive funding for his activist works. It is satisfying that after two years in the political wilderness, he is getting an outpouring of support from those defending an ad with a message that reinforces the power of political sacrifice. Nike is the official sponsor of the NFL, so this ad campaign is a thumb in the eye of every owner who has colluded against him. Imagine the first time this ad plays during the commercial of an NFL game. [Dallas Cowboys owner] Jerry Jones’s head might explode clean off his body. So, good for Colin Kaepernick. But global, multibillion-dollar corporations that run an archipelago of sweatshops don’t underwrite rebellions. They co-opt and quash them. If anyone can navigate this snakepit, it is Colin Kaepernick, but it won’t be easy. The revolution will not be branded. We should be honest about that. The message of standing up to police violence and racial inequity shouldn’t end up in a swoosh-laden graveyard. That’s the risk that comes with this sponsorship. But if anyone has earned the right to take that risk, it’s Colin Kaepernick (Source: Zirin 2018b, np link). 

Kaepernick … has suffered more than any other athlete in recent times for merely exercising his right to speak out on social justice issues. [But his partnership with Nike shows we have] to acknowledge the limitations of any radical politics whether in the sports arena or more widely, that is divorced from a critique of capitalism and a socialist alternative. It is also a reminder that late-modern capitalism can embrace and even promote radical, chic rhetoric as long as it does not call into question the ideology of capitalism itself (Source: Carrington & Boykoff 2018, np link).

I, like many others, fully supported Kaepernick’s silent, symbolic protest against American racism and policy brutality through his ‘taking a knee’ during the national anthem at football games, I also sympathized with his career sacrifice to stand for his beliefs. Now, I find myself seemingly stranded on a desert island in my denunciation of his disappointing turn. There is nothing heroic in endorsing a multinational corporation. There is nothing heroic in receiving millions of dollars from an extractive, exploitative company, no matter what good those millions of dollars might be used for. At best, it is a zero sum game. Even if Kaepernick donates all of his Nike earnings toward ending police brutality and promoting racial justice in the U.S., he would just be calling it even to compensate for the exploitation of other people – mainly people of color – and natural resources stemming from the manufacture and sale of Nike products. This is not helpful towards progress in our global society nor is it helpful toward moving us away from the corporate capitalistic practices that sow the seeds of racism and police brutality in the first place (Source: Mattis 2018, np link).

I 100% support Colin’s kneeling and why he’s kneeling. I also want to be clear that I am not in a position to suggest that Colin needs to use his platform to pivot the conversation away from police brutality to international labor rights and Nike’s sweatshop abuses. Every American needs to keep talking about police brutality and Colin is keeping that conversation front and center. White people who are uncomfortable with that – deal with it. It’s not our place to tell black Americans how to fight white supremacy in a way that makes us feel better (Source: Keady 2018, np link).

[Sweatshops weren’t] his issue. Given he’s a professional athlete who really did take on an important issue in an important way and made a huge sacrifice with respect to money and the thing he loved to do, i’m willing to take it (Source: @benigma2017 2018b, np link).

How many fights can one man take on (Source: @MasterONeal 2018, np link)?

He fought his fight. We can fight the rest (Source: @benigma2017 2018b, np link).

Kaepernick might be seen as a modern-day Robin Hood … [because his] deal with Nike will allow him to continue his empowering community and youth activism work, such as his Know Your Rights camp (Source: Carrington & Boykoff 2018, np link)?

@Kaepernick7 absolutely deserves his Nike deal. But Nike … does not deserve Kaepernick (Source: @WalkerBragman, 2018, np link).

… this company doesn’t have the authority to stand behind Kaepernick when it hasn’t even stood behind its own workers (Source: Fairclough 2018, np link).

I’m sooooooo conflicted. Because literally … no one deserves it more. But Nike is a shit company that oppresses people. Including POC. And I’m VERY confused why Kaep would involve himself with them (Source: @SarcasmStardust 2018, np link).

[A]ctivists, organizers and leaders sometimes make mistakes, and I think he made a mistake by aligning himself with a company that exploits workers and breaks unions. It’s not just a capitalist company – it’s a hyper-capitalist company (Source: Celemente in Anon 2018b, np link).

Sacrificing your career for your principles is courageous; acting as a representative to a billion-dollar global corporation is simply selling out (Source: Mattis 2018, np link).

It should be possible to support Kaepernick and recognize the righteousness of his actions, while simultaneously questioning if buying a Nike product also ends up reinforcing attitudes of workplace sexual abuse and the exploitation of sweatshop labor (Source: @AlexReynolds 2018, np link).

Perhaps Kaepernick could explore more deeply the consequences of promoting corporate capitalism, which has placed humanity at a precipice both economically and ecologically. Selling out one’s integrity and bravery to that very entity is a move in the exact wrong direction. The fact that Kaepernick has taken such a misguided step is discouraging; the fact that so many support his step demonstrates just how wrongheaded we all are in our approaches to solving the many problems that ail us (Source: Mattis 2018, np link).

Nike couldn’t care less either way for Kap’s protest or against (Source: Frei 2018, np link).

The hypocrisy by Nike is extreme using Colin Kaepernick … to cover their own internal and external problem (Source: Fox News 2018, np link).

Kaepernick sent an important and groundbreaking message to the American people when he knelt during the National Anthem to protest police brutality. The only message that Nike is sending is that it’s good at noticing trends, that it knows what will make people want to purchase their merchandise and that it’s willing to capitalize on someone else’s humanitarian ideas while ignoring its own inhumane system (Source: Fairclough 2018, np link).

When a wealthy corporation decides that it is good PR to be on the side that is ethically correct, then activists should celebrate. Because practically, in today’s filthy world, it means you’re winning, that the idea is finally gaining traction on the social and political front (Source: @AMajeedHD 2018a, np link).

Nike has the ability to make a real difference – it needs to just do it, even if it means sacrificing some profits (Source: Fairclough 2018, np link).

With all of your company’s money and branding power, your company CHOSE to make a difference. … I applaud your company for having the common sense and decency to take a stand on such a controversial issue (Source: gromulosgrom 2018, np link).

Brands with big wallets are the best advocates + they KNOW how to change behavior (Source: @Adverstine 2018, np link).

… the … message being sent here is that people of color are worthy of safety and acceptance in society. Worthy enough to be represented in major advertising campaigns. Worthy of being paid for their talent regardless of their social stance. Worthy of having their issues be recognized (Source: Coulman 2018, np link).

[I]t’s always easy to question the motivations of corporations. Any corporation of any size has done shameful things. In Nike’s case, the most egregious of these misdeeds has involved a history of appalling sweatshop and child labor practices. But just as it’s wise to not permanently write anyone off – redemption of even the most stained character can begin at any moment – so too can a corporation start down the road toward being a genuine force for good. In putting its own brand on the line to feature Colin Kaepernick, Nike is acting with genuine courage. The company has, at least for a moment, put itself on the right side of history. They’ll alienate customers for doing this, and not just from the MAGA crowd. Expect the usual progressives living in glass houses to use this campaign as a pretext to belittle Nike for its past wrongdoings. Despite what its detractors will say, Nike is taking a risk here, and showing real courage. They could have taken the safe route and chosen Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods for this campaign – superstars who are ciphers when it comes to doing anything for anyone but themselves. But Nike instead went with someone risky, who has arguably taken the most courageous stance of anyone in professional sports in this generation (Source: Markus nd, np link).

Advancing any political agenda is rarely a corporation’s core purpose. But commercialization doesn’t necessarily mean a co-opting so complete that movements, and certainly not their champions, are sapped entirely of their power. The vague ‘believe in something’ might feel milquetoast in comparison with Kaepernick’s pointed politics. But the Nike deal tacitly approves – and amplifies – the latter as much as it explicitly, if perhaps unsatisfyingly, articulates the former (Source: Petrzela 2018, np link).

The irony of the Nike ad featuring Colin using the line, ‘Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.’ is not lost on me. I was forced from my coaching job at St. John’s University with the NCAA Division I National Champion Red Storm Men’s Soccer program when I refused to take part in a $3.5M endorsement deal with Nike. I took this stand because Nike was (and still is) paying poverty wages and physically, verbally, and sexually abusing workers in their sweatshops around the world. That stand made big news as I was, and still am, the only athlete in the world to publicly refuse to take part in a Nike endorsement deal because of their sweatshop abuses. I took my passion and my commitment to labor rights to another level in July 2000 when I moved to Indonesia. There, in solidarity with Nike workers, I lived in a slum on the outskirts of Jakarta, attempting to survive on the Nike workers wage at the time – $1.25 a day. I lost 25lbs in a month and heard the heart-wrenching stories of the human beings whose dignity is ground down as they grind out millions of pairs of Nikes a month. I documented my experiences in the award-winning short film ‘Behind the Swoosh.’ Given the above, I am deeply disappointed that Nike is attempting to co-opt Colin’s actions in order to sell more shoes that are still made in sweatshop conditions by mostly young women of color in Vietnam, Indonesia, and China. The short of it is, Nike never does anything simply because it is the right thing to do. They do not care about social justice or human rights. This is about money. Period (Source: Keady 2018, np link).

Awareness is merely the most minuscule beginning of attempting to redress social ills. A clever, cliché-filled advertising campaign never helps anything but the bottom-line of the corporation doing the marketing. Marketing and consumerism are the problem, not the solution. Advertising is not a political act, it is a financial one. Social change never came from marketing or consumerism and it never will (Source: Mattis 2018, np link).

[Nike] aren’t activists. They’re turning activism into profit’ (Source: @halfadams 2018, np link).

[Kaepernick’s] Dream Crazy [ad] encourages marginalized people to excel today (Source: Bradshaw 2018, np link).

[But] if Nike truly resonated with Kaepernick’s message and cared about marginalized people, they would not be running sweatshops across the world (Source: Hendrix 2018, np link).

When we buy Nike’s seemingly rebellious liberalism, we buy into reformist politics that excludes their dream, which is to earn a living wage (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

Yeah guys, Nike is so woke. Just ignore that child labor and sweatshops, nothing to see here. God, anyone who falls for this corporate pandering is an idiot. Nike doesn’t release this ad because they care. They release it because they know it will be a controversy which brings attention to the brand (Source: Wouldn’t It Be Cool If 2018, np link).

The idea that Nike executives would position themselves as messengers of Kaepernick’s righteous years-long struggle is, to put it mildly, galling. In Nike’s antiseptic, hollow corporate-speak, Kaepernick is simply ‘moving the world forward.’ There is no mention here of police violence or racism. And it would be stupid to expect it. This is Nike. Asking them to be a voice for social justice is like asking a dog to meow (Source: Zirin 2018b, np link).

Going out and buying Nike merchandise does not equate belief in human rights because Nike doesn’t represent human rights. Your money is going to a company that has proved to disregard them when it counted. Because of this, supporting the brand does not necessarily mean you’re supporting the cause, or Colin Kaepernick (Source: Fairclough 2018, np link).

Corporations do not fund uproar. … Nike, likely, is not selling gear with Kaepernick kneeling, or his stated issues with capitalism, or his disdain for the presidency. It shall be neatly packaged rhymes and slogans, enough to make one remember who is being honored, but unwilling to endorse his true motives (Source: Tynes 2018, np link).

When Nike sales shoot as high as Kaepernick’s basketball (totally kidding) due to their intentional media buzz causing fans to buy much more than what they normally would to compensate and outdo the feeble attempts at a right-wing boycott, the demand for these products rises, and the burden of which is transferred to their sweatshops, US-based incarcerated slavery camps (prisons), and the producers of their raw material. Yes, sweatshops and prison slave labor will be producing Nike’s new collection with Kaepernick. People of color domestically and globally will be exploited and violence against them justified in the name of civil rights (Source: Katebi 2018, np link).

I hear the complaint and acknowledge that it’s valid. What’s the alternative? @Nike makes the same amount of money and doesn’t take a stand? They will lose customers over this as well as gain them (Source: @Adverstine 2018, np link).

… can’t wait until BP donates to the Yemeni genocide, or Monsanto openly berates the Myanmar government for their oppression of the Rohingya’s, or Exxon hires a Palestinian brand ambassador. Wouldn’t that be something (Source: @AMajeedHD 2018b, np link)?

How about Nike making a political statement with stopping the use of slaves to make their shoes and clothing (Source: Frei 2018, np link).

Nike already has enough money to raise the pay of workers to more than a living wage. Instead, it chose to move out of nations with rising wage demands like China to go to Vietnam, where labor is cheaper (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

Reading the analyses and social media chatter about Kaepernick … I struggle to find much discussion of the actual causes he protested against. … very little has been said about the continued slaughtering of innocent black victims by bloodthirsty, racist police officers, and certainly less still has changed with regard to action against these injustices (Source: Mattis 2018, np link).

Black pain cannot simply be advertisement fodder without a full realization over what is being trumpeted. On full display is how profitable blackness, its gains, its happiness or tragic losses can be to the white consumer. Black culture is never believed as anything but property, while being frequently re-sold to the majority as the fad of the moment. It is difficult to trust a corporation like Nike and understand its standards. … The terror isn’t merely in Kaepernick’s union with a corporate backer. It is the question of whether this will actually help him or the people he aims to serve (Source: Tynes 2018, np link).

[T]his is not simply a marketing strategy. It is much more powerful, and much more destructive than that. It is part of a larger, decades-long movement of brands, corporations (and their philanthropic shields), and even some progressive politicians revolution-washing our movements until there is nothing left but logos and slogans as empty as our pockets and foresight. It’s like green-washing (in which environmentally destructive fast-fashion brands paint themselves as ‘sustainable’ or ‘ethical’ by creating one-off conscious collections) but for our movements, reducing our systematic approaches for change to pacification with representation, and movement building to celebrity endorsements. Revolution-washing is an incredibly effective and destructive tactic, encouraging us to further silo and divide our issues, become increasingly America-centric and exclude those beyond our borders from our consciousness and solidarity, normalize compromises that strip the very essence of our values to the tastelessness of white people’s ‘seasoned’ cooking, and justify the exploitation of those who are not ‘in our backyard’. Essentially, as more and more corporations and brands attempt to ‘buy’ their way into the ‘resistance’, the faster our movements compromise and crumble (Source: Katebi 2018, np link).

lol capitalism always wins (Source: Phetasy 2018, np link).

I hope Kaepernick will contact the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and its executive director Scott Nova and ask for a background briefing about the plight of Nike workers around the world. The WRC has worked with anti-sweatshop activists on campuses and around the world to put a spotlight on Nike’s abuses and has actually won some victories. But it’s safe to assume Kaepernick had to sign a non-disclosure agreement that he wouldn’t publicly criticize Nike. So any idea that he might lead a delegation of pro athletes and human-rights activists to investigate Nike’s sweatshops is probably wishful thinking. I hope I’m wrong, because I respect Kaepernick’s integrity. As the Nike ad notes, he’s already made many sacrifices – jeopardizing his career as a pro athlete – in order to speak truth to power. What sacrifices will Knight and Nike’s other top brass make to address the plight of the Asian workers who make the company’s sneakers but can’t afford to buy them? If, by hiring Kaepernick, Nike is legitimating protest, that’s great. So it shouldn’t complain if people protest at Nike headquarters, stores, overseas factories, and Knight’s home about its mistreatment of workers toiling in sweatshops (Source: Dreier 2018, np link)! 

Imagine a different ad. One where a union leader like Waldin Reyes smiles on screen and proudly holds up The People’s Shoe, a sneaker line made by a worker’s cooperative. No billion-dollar CEO. No billion-dollar celebrities. Instead the workers wave to the camera as they leave the shop early to see their children. The camera follows one woman to her brightly lit home. Her clothes are drying on the line as her family sits at a long table, laughing and eating. She takes a People’s Shoe, shows it to the camera and says, ‘Just Organize’ (Source: Powers 2018, np link).

[Imagine] Colin Kaepernick, who now is under a multi-million dollar annual Nike contract, has thus decided to take a knee and protest the company’s ‘systematic capitalist abuses of child labor.’ ‘As a Nike employee myself,’ said Kaepernick, ‘I can’t in my full integrity stay silent on this issue.  Nike’s oppression of children and workers mirrors the United State’s oppression of minorities. I shall take a kneel until all Nike products are made in the USA by well-paid unionized employees.’ Nike has yet to respond to Kaepernick’s stance, but inside sources have privately responded with ‘oh shit – what have we done?’… (Source: Anon 2018f, np link).

… next time we express our opinion over Colin Kaepernick being the new face of Nike, consider the fact that the true issue doesn’t lie with him at all (Source: Hendrix 2018, np link).

Social media blew up. By Tuesday, there were already 3.4 million mentions of Nike, most of which were neutral to positive, and a 1300% lift in Nike mentions (Source: Trussell 2018, np link).

Over 30,000 people were tweeting with the hashtag #NikeBoycott on Tuesday morning, making it among the top trending topics on Twitter (Source: @globalnews 2018, np link).

Typically experiencing about 20,000 posts per day over the last year, Nike saw almost 50 times that the day the ad was released. Almost 1 million posts in that day alone off of the ad is enough to warrant the money they were paying Kaepernick to feature in it (Source: Jordano 2018, np link).

The ad campaign generated ‘possibly record likes by Americans’ on social media, even though there’s been a wave of anti-Nike comments as well (Source: Thomas 2018, np link).

Nike added roughly 170,000 Instagram followers around the timing of the release of its ad campaign (Source: Thomas 2018, np link).

… according to Apex Marketing Group, Nike has received more than $43 million worth of media exposure in the less than 24 hours since the campaign was announced, with the vast majority of coverage either ‘neutral’ or ‘positive’ (Source: Jennings 2018, np link).

U.S. voters approved of the Kaepernick ad by a 49% to 37% margin, according to a Quinnipiac University survey. Among voters age 18-34, 67% approved of the campaign, and 67% said NFL players have the right to protest by kneeling during the national anthem (Source: Sweeney 2018, np link).

Ace Metrix found that only 13% of surveyed viewers said that they were less likely to buy Nike products after viewing the ad. And that dropped to just 10% of millennials and 6% of Gen-Zers. In fact, 56% of general population viewers said that they were more likely to purchase Nike after seeing the spot (Source: Pesce 2018, np link).

Despite the fact that Kaepernick has not been signed by an NFL team since he left the 49ers, Nike released an all-black Colin Kaepernick ‘icon’ jersey in February that retailed for $150. The jersey sold out on Nike.com just hours after the online release. Now, if you search for ‘Kaepernick’ products on Nike.com, a message pops up that solicits your cell phone number to receive notifications that will come directly to a consumer the next time any Kaepernick products are released due to the high demand (Source: Brown 2019, np link)

… research has shown a 31% surge in Nike’s online sales in the days following the Kaepernick ad launch (Source: Bradshaw 2018, np link).

… it experienced a 17% increase in foot traffic at 242 stores (Source: @aliciatillman 2018, np link).

Foursquare’s analysis … revealed that foot traffic increased 27.3% in blue [Democrat] counties versus 8.5% in red [Republican] counties. Foursquare defines red and blue counties based on which 2016 presidential candidate received at least 55% of the votes during that election (Source: Sweeney 2018, np link).

While the sportswear company initially saw a fall in shares by 3% … (Source: Bradshaw 2018, np link).

.. [its] shares hit a record high of $83.90 on Thursday (Source: Thomas 2018, np link).

Since the Kaepernick ads ran, Nike’s stock has risen 6.25 percent, which added $6.38 billion to the company’s value (Source: Curle 2018, np link).

What’s fascinating is the interplay of this campaign among a whole range of stakeholders for Nike. The media has given them millions of dollars of earned impressions. The general public showed the expected mix of anger and support of the move on Twitter and other social platforms. This created some concern among their investors … Finally they made an impact with their clients, and potential clients, as athletes who took to social media to talk about the issue were overwhelming supportive of Nike’s messaging (Source: Quint in Anon nd, np link).

Especially proud to be a part of the Nike family today. #justdoit (Source: @serenawilliams 2018, np link). 

Welcome to capitalism wherin presidents, politics, protesters and civil unrest are all tools of the trade (Source: BarronVonVaderHam 2018, np link).

This isn’t about consumers Nike might lose … [i]t’s about cultivating an entire generation of consumers who are up for grabs at a moment where the lines between culture, politics and activism are blurry – a notion that might make older people uncomfortable but is now the coming-of-age reality for anyone under 18 (Source: Wolken 2018, np link).

There’s a marketing lesson to be learned from this. Any attention is good attention in marketing. You WANT to strongly repel some people from buying from you (Source:@ryanmagin 2018, np link). 

In the wake of … [the] ad, a growing number of college sports programs have been inundated with letters from fans and alumni urging them to drop Nike equipment and apparel. After submitting a series of Freedom of Information requests, USA Today discovered dozens of letters to college sports programs by fans and school alumni who are incensed over Nike’s choice of the anthem protesting, former NFL player as its public face. Fans have sent letters to colleges in North Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, West Virginia and more, the paper reported. North Carolina athletics director Bubba Cunningham, for instance, received many such emails suggesting that the University of North Carolina dump Nike. In one letter, for instance, alumni Larry Hill urged the school to dump Nike saying, ‘Nike in its support of Kaepernick is showing it’s true colors of ‘greed and support of politics in sports.’ … Politics does not need to be involved in sports. I will still be supportive to ‘My University’ in continuing to purchase Carolina products and apparel, but not from Nike!’ Another message told Cunningham that Kaepernick is ‘misguided, (divisive), racist and Unamerican,’ while other messages were written in a similar vein. Cunningham, though, was unbowed and told fans that the school would not be dropping Nike. ‘Thank you for sharing your thoughts,’ Cunningham wrote to many of those who wrote the college. ‘As I’m sure you know, our University does not have a role in choosing who or how Nike promotes its brand and athletes. Our association with Nike goes far beyond this advertising campaign. We truly appreciate your continued support of Carolina. Go Heels!’ (Source: Huston 2018, np link).

This was absolutely GENIUS move. #ColinKaepernickNike going to be BIGGER than the GAME. It’s sad but reality. He’s going never play in the NFL again. Does it really matter now? His CAUSE bigger than the GAME now! You can only imagine the looks all the haters once they lay eyes on the sea of people attending games and wearing  #ColinKaepernickNikebrand apparel. That’s going to be KARMA in the worse way. #KaepernickJustDidIt #CheckMate #FightContinues #SocialJustice (Source: @koda.candy 2018, np link).

Colin Kaepernick is now a hero twice over. Not only has he raised awareness about racism, but he’s also brought the plight of the Nike sweatshop worker to the attention of a bunch of people who didn’t give a shit about it until it was convenient for their argument against him (Source: @TheFarrarSide, 2018, np link).

The money Nike is paying Kaepernick is probably the smartest investment they will ever make, because it transformed them overnight from ‘the sweatshop shoes’ to ‘the shoes of a modern day civil rights hero’, with no change in the working conditions of any of their workers (Source: @ScubaForDogs 2018, np link).