Does any profession attract a higher percentage of sweet summer children than sportswear marketing? We are encouraged to think of this most modern discipline as a sophisticated, perhaps even cutthroat world, where promotional and sales whizzes compete to be the best of the best in the battle to market various symphonies in sweat‑wicking polyester and cheap leather.
In which case, why does the appearance of halfwitted naivety continue to dog these 360-degree thinkers? This week alone, Adidas and Arsenal have had to shut down a social media initiative after its promise to tweet pictures of its new kit with fan Twitter handles on it saw the official Adidas account posting pictures of Arsenal shirts with racist or deliberately offensive messages on the back. Then, on Tuesday, Nike were forced to withdraw a special edition Air Max Fourth of July shoe after their own brand ambassador Colin Kaepernick reportedly voiced concern to the company at their decision to emblazon it with the so-called Betsy Ross flag, a 13-star Revolutionary War version of the stars and stripes. This flag dates back to a time of oppression and racism, but – more importantly – has been co-opted by far-right groups including the American Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan, precisely for that reason.
We’ll begin with Adidas, who were Monday’s Idiot McIdiotfaces after their official account tweeted out Arsenal shirts emblazoned with messages we might broadly euphemise as “non-inclusive”. Or as they ended up putting it: “As part of our partnership launch with Arsenal we have been made aware of the abuse of a Twitter personalisation mechanic created to allow excited fans to get their name on the back of the new jersey. Due to a small minority creating offensive versions of this we have immediately turned off the functionality and the Twitter team will be investigating.”
Let’s hope that’s the Adidas Twitter team, and not the team from actual Twitter, whose investigative philosophy is a resolute “no stone turned”. But some investigation of the Adidas marketing department might also be beneficial, given it appears to employ the last people in the entire country not to realise that in the social media era throwing questions open to the floor always ends badly. I mean, have you seen the floor of the internet? It is positively running with various forms of toxic waste. It’s a mistake to ask it for the answer to anything except the question: “What is the most offensive thing you can think of saying in response to this question?”
That said, Adidas’s boo-boo is absolutely dwarfed by the Nike one, just in terms of scale. Naturally, there will be those eternal conspiracists who declare archly that the entire Betsy Ross flame war was started on purpose by Nike for publicity. Fraid not. It’s one thing to generate controversy and free advertising via stoking a culture war with a relatively inexpensive online campaign. But to design and manufacture a product, get it all the way to stores, then recall it after private internal conversations with one of your highest-profile brand ambassadors is, if we’re realistic, a highly inefficient sort of marketing conspiracy.
Still, it’s done now and, given this is America, I don’t need to tell you a huge amount of shit is being completely lost by people. The Arizona governor, Doug Ducey, has declared he will rescind funding for a $184m Nike factory proposed for his state. “Words cannot express my disappointment about this terrible decision,” fumed Mr Ducey, somehow finding words, in a series of tweets. The former presidential candidate Herman Cain confirmed an enduring reputation for understatement by declaring: “Just so you know how this works now: Nothing can happen in America anymore if Colin Kaepernick doesn’t like it.”
But the daddy of them all remains the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who naturally weighed in on this priority issue for the nation. “If we’re in a political environment where the American flag has become controversial to Americans,” he stated, “I think we’ve got a problem.” You do have one, Mitch. Several big ones, to be accurate, though it feels weird that a shoe prompted this realisation as opposed to, say, children dying in shameful conditions in US custody at the border with Mexico. This is, after all, a week in which you also called basic protections for immigrant children in detention camps “way to the left of the mainstream”, and threatened to block a bill guaranteeing basic care for them.
On the one hand, the row is arguably not the biggest loss for Nike, given that all of “those sort” of Republicans had supposedly already vowed never to wear Nike again the minute the knee-taking Kaepernick was appointed a brand ambassador. You may recall extensive pictures and social media videos of them cutting the swooshes off socks and burning their own shoes and so on. On the other, how on earth did this one get this far? Does no one in Nike’s presumably vast marketing department realise that flags are a vaguely touchy issue in American politics, be they confederate ones or various others?
For all the political capital to be made by political capitalists, though, it goes without saying that the biggest loser is Betsy Ross, the Philadelphia seamstress who has been dead for almost 200 years, but whom a large number of wingnuts are now encouraging you to imagine has been disrespected by having her notional Nike sponsorship removed. A humbling few days for the sports marketers of the universe, all things considered, who might be advised not to rush their next moves.