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A new NFL season will begin Thursday. The launch day will not be dedicated to football at all. This is Nike and Colin Kaepernick.
Nike (NKE) revealed Kaepernick as the face of its "Just Do It" campaign for the 30th anniversary of Labor Day, simply by re-tweeting a single image of Kaepernick. In the days that followed, he benefited from the free buzz – more than $ 100 million of free buzz, say marketing experts.
"Nike has probably hit the $ 100 million mark in the free media," says Brian Cristiano, CEO of advertising agency Bold Worldwide, which counts among its customers many brands that advertise during games. NFL. And this, even before Nike released Wednesday a two-minute advertisement told by Kaepernick. Before that, all he had done was a tweet. Another company, Apex Marketing, is now evaluating the value of the exposure at $ 163 million.
Nike plans to air Kaepernick's ad in the NFL opening game on Thursday night.
A billboard stands at the top of a Nike store in San Francisco, California, showing former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. (AP Photo / Eric Risberg)
"Brands are nervous behind the scenes"
<p class = "canvas-atom-canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Of course, many football fans are angry at Nike kisses Kaepernick, and expressed his displeasure with the hashtag of social media #BoycottNike. "data-reactid =" 45 "> Of course, many football fans are unhappy with Nike who accepts Kaepernick, and expressed their dissatisfaction with the hashtag of social media #BoycottNike.
But Cristiano (and other sports marketing executives who spoke to Yahoo Finance Monday after the announcement of Kaepernick's news) predicts that positive attention will override long-term criticism and that Nike's political risk is a model for other brands in 2018.
"This is how the conversation is going now," says Cristiano, who is the guest of this week's Yahoo Finance Sportsbook podcast episode (listen below). "If you play in the middle and you just try to be reasonable and say," Well, we do not want to offend anyone, nobody will talk about you. "
If that's true, you might wonder what Nike's competitors like Adidas and Under Armor should be doing right now.
There is no easy answer to this question. Nike, which is also the official sponsor of NFL clothing, is winning the conversation right now. But if Adidas or Under Armor hurriedly threw something on the same political lines to generate buzz, it would be an inauthentic model, Cristiano said. "And that's when everyone is going against you."
Of course, the biggest story is the politicization of American football. President Donald Trump spent a whole year protesting publicly against the NFL owners for allowing some players to protest in the first place; peak viewing hours dropped by an average of 10% last season due to a wide range of factors, including, at least in part, political indignation; and there is no sign that political issues will disappear this year.
Where does this leave the NFL's official sponsors, a group full of mainstream brands such as Bud Light, Pepsi, FedEx, Procter & Gamble, Intel and Microsoft, as well as non-sponsors who are spending their marketing budgets for and adjacent to football?
They are nervous.
"Brands are nervous behind the scenes. Even if you participate in the NFL, if the conversation is too much in one direction or the other, their brand will be challenged, "says Cristiano. "The problem is that it's going to happen because you're part of the conversation or you're just going to be useless. Brands must be content to say: "That's exactly what it is today, it's very critical, everything is politicized. So what do we really believe in, what do we want to say publicly and stay true to that? End of the story.
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<p class = "canvas-atom-canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – smt Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Daniel Roberts is the commercial editor of Yahoo Finance. It hosts the Sportsbook podcast. Follow him on Twitter @readdanwrite.
"data-reactid =" 61 ">Daniel Roberts is the commercial editor of Yahoo Finance. It hosts the Sportsbook podcast. Follow him on Twitter @lireDanwrite.
<p class = "canvas-atom-canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – smt Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "Read more:"data-reactid =" 62 ">Read more:
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