Microdunk in these Twitter basketball shoes

Shoe designer Brass Monki has gone from custom-designing Super Mario and Bob Marley shoes to something even more embarrassing: Internet-themed sneakers. He's put together some Nike basketball shoes featuring the Firefox and Twitter logos, and Adidas hinted (or threatened, depending on your point of view) last year that they were planning something similar—showing off some Twitter and Facebook concept shoes. These are supposed to be for "geeks," but geeks are too busy biting the heads off chickens in carnival sideshows to tweet regularly, so I'm assuming they mean nerds. They're off base either way, because all the nerds I know display their nerd plumage through anime and webcomic merchandise. These shoes look like what their cat-lady aunt buys them for Christmas after hearing they like the Internet.

Filed under Brass Monki, Footwear, Kiefaber, Nike, Social media
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Nike gets Kobe to unleash his black mamba

Kobe Bryant got lots of snickers when he told the world that his alter ego is the black mamba, a fierce serpent known for its uncanny ability to strike at any moment with pinpoint accuracy. Now, Nike's getting on board with a new "Black Mamba" campaign, including an eight-minute online video coming in February co-starring Bruce Willis and directed by Robert Rodriguez, the man who brought the world Spy Kids. There's a social twist to the site, created by R/GA. The idea is, if enough people chatter about Kobe on Twitter (determined by an algorithm that searches for his name and other terms like speed, champion, tenacity, heart, etc.), it triggers a "Mamba Moment" that changes the appearance of the site and causes some new Kobe videos to be posted. The threshold to start is 1,500 tweets per hour, but that may increase given the amount of global chatter the agency team is seeing. Such Mamba Moments last for six hours. (If they persist, you should probably call you doctor.) Nike is sweetening the pot by offering visitors a chance to win the new Nike Zoom Kobe VI sneaker by tweeting #mambamoment. We'll see if this takes off. It's always hard for brands to create these kind of groundswells because, well, they're pretty artificial. Then again, Kobe giving himself a nickname is pretty artificial, too.

Filed under Celebrity endorsements, Morrissey, Nike, R/GA
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Nike ad honors Oregon Ducks after non-win

The Oregon Ducks lost to the Auburn Tigers 22-19 in Monday's college-football championship game. Nike provided the Ducks' attire. The snug white uniforms and black helmets were OK. The grey-silver-lime cleats and electric-lime socks, however, were distractingly awful. It looked like the team vomited mojitos on their feet before the kickoff. Nike wisely opted to show only the helmet in a consolation ad celebrating the Ducks—despite their failure—that ran the next day. The text proclaims, "Everyone loses games. Few change them." Perhaps the Ducks will consider changing their attire next season, as no team in footwear that ugly deserves to win the title. I wonder why they "Just blew it"? Was it the shoes? It's gotta be the shoes!

Filed under Gianatasio, Nike
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Wieden's Nike site has Flash running scared

You know Flash microsites are on the run when Nike skips the Adobe effects in favor of HTML5. Wieden + Kennedy has a slick new corporate-responsibility site out: Nike's Better World. It uses HTML5 to provide a seamless navigation of constantly refreshing content as the user scrolls down the page. The overall experience is pretty compelling compared to the befuddling nature of many microsites. One Web design blog quibbles that the videos are still in Flash. Can't have everything, I guess.

Filed under Morrissey, Nike, Wieden + Kennedy
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Should Nike re-sign resurgent Michael Vick?

Nike is famous—some would say infamous—for sticking with athletes in trouble. Look no further than Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger. But some sports stars screw up too much. Like Michael Vick, the star quarterback who went to federal prison on dogfighting charges. The grisly images and pressure from animal-rights groups prompted Nike to drop Vick in 2007 after the allegations surfaced. There were reports last year that Nike had reupped with Vick, but the brand denied that and said it had just sent him some free shoes. Vick, of course, has electrified the NFL with his new team, the Philadelphia Eagles. His story is seemingly readymade for Wieden + Kennedy to reprise the "Michael Vick Experience" ads to dramatize his meteoric rise, swift fall and unfolding redemption. The question is whether Nike will risk alienating the chunk of the population who aren't willing to forgive Vick's actions or acknowledge that he's paid a hefty price for them and seemingly turned his life around with his second chance. What do you think?

Filed under Celebrity endorsements, Morrissey, Nike
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LeBron has questions. Fans have answers.

There's no questioning the incredible artistry of LeBron James' new Nike spot from Wieden + Kennedy, but there sure is plenty of answering to do. James spends 90 seconds lobbing rhetorical questions, and fans have spent the last few days offering up some candid (and occasionally hilarious) answers for The King's consideration. Watch the spot below, then, after the jump, check out some of the better answers we've culled from across the Internet.

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Filed under Griner, Nike, Wieden + Kennedy
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Nike goes 'Boom!' in new Wieden campaign

Nike has released a new series of ads from Wieden + Kennedy with the simple theme of "Boom!" The spots draw attention to high-impact moments in sports and, presumably, Nike's role in facilitating them. It's funny how they keep inserting random clips of women's volleyball to keep the ads from becoming a total sausage fest. Even funnier are some of the viewer reactions on Hypebeast. One guy "can't wait to see these crispy fresh ass campaigns on my tele screen." Did they get Tom Wolfe to write that? Four more ads after the jump.

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Filed under Kiefaber, Nike, Wieden + Kennedy
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Nike says butt-toning shoes are full of crap

When I first saw the ads for Reebok EasyTone, I thought it was a funny product suitable for infomercial land. The entire premise is laughable: Ladies can firm their legs and butts without the hassle of actual exercise. No, instead they just need to do their normal walking in magic shoes. Turns out both Reebok and Sketchers, which makes category leader Shape-Ups, were onto a $1 billion market. Never underestimate the potential for a quick fix. This movement left Nike in a bit of a pickle. Its sports scientists figured butt-toning shoes had to be a fad, the equivalent of the electronic ab belt. To its credit, Nike is waiting out the craze and even questioning it head-on, kicking off a print ad campaign in women¹s magazines for its alternative to the Shape-Ups. The catch with the Nike Air Max Trainer One is that it requires actual exercise. Bummer. The tagline gives the magic-bullet crowd some needed tough love: "This shoe works if you do."

Filed under Butts, Morrissey, Nike, Reebok
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Nike's World Cup ad curse captured in video

Yesterday, we wrote about the curse of Nike's "Write the Future" spot, with the ad's major stars underperforming so woefully at the World Cup. Helpfully illustrating the point is the handy "Write the Future" remix above, with pre- and in-tournament footage showing just how bleak many of the players' futures turned out to be in South Africa. On a related note, check out the interview below that Eleftheria Parpis did in Cannes last week with Eric Quennoy and Mark Bernath, co-creative directors on the "Write the Future" project at Wieden + Kennedy in Amsterdam. They talk about giving Adidas a run for their money and how they reversed the traditional distribution model in getting this spot noticed worldwide.

Filed under Nike, Nudd, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy, World Cup
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Curse of the Nike ad hits World Cup players

Wieden + Kennedy's flashy "Write the Future" spot for the World Cup was great fun to watch, but most of the talk now is about how it might have cursed the players it featured—particularly its six major stars.
  Let's go to the replay:
  Didier Drogba: broke his arm, Ivory Coast eliminated
  Fabio Cannavaro: captained underwhelming Italy, which was eliminated
  Wayne Rooney: didn't score, England eliminated
  Franck Ribéry: French team imploded and were then eliminated
  Ronaldinho: Didn't even make the Brazilian team
  Cristiano Ronaldo: scored once, Portugal eliminated
  Clearly, the less optimistic futures these players envisioned in the spot were the correct ones. It remains to be seen whether Rooney, in particular, will now grow a beard and live in a trailer. (The previously fictitious headline "England In Roo-Ins," from the commercial, did make its way to the top of at least one real media story.)
  Perhaps due to its sudden lack of endorsers left in the tournament, Nike has rolled out the new spot below, starring Brazil's Robinho, who leads his team in shots with 10, has scored a goal and whose team managed to make the quarterfinals.
  UPDATE: Continuing the curse, Roger Federer lost today at Wimbledon. Bucking the trend are two other cameo stars from the ad: Kobe Bryant, whose L.A. Lakers won the NBA Finals, and Homer Simpson, who was recently named the greatest TV character of the past 20 years.

Filed under Nike, Nudd, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy, World Cup
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Get your melodic feet in Nike musical shoes

Wieden + Kennedy's Tokyo office teamed with Japanese hip-hop artists Hifana for this clip, released a few months ago, in which Nike sneakers are tricked out as musical instruments. The shoes were wired through a digital system and bent to produce what sounds like electronic distortion in a bad Moby song. Which is every Moby song, by the way. There's also a making-of video, posted after the jump. It took an engineering team and lots of Macbooks and software development to make the shoes sing. NASA didn't use this much technology to send men to the moon. I kept expecting someone to crack a joke about "sole music," but if the subtitles are accurate, the artists and crew showed amazing restraint.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

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Filed under Footwear, Gianatasio, Japan, Nike, Wieden + Kennedy
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Nike's app now urges you to write the future

Wieden + Kennedy's "Write the Future" soccer spot, created for this World Cup, is already legendary. Now, the agency has unveiled a related interactive element in the campaign—a Twitter and Facebook integration that asks the public to write the future of their favorite players in a few brief words—with the best submissions put up in lights on the electric facade of the Life Centre building in Johannesburg. The Facebook app is here. Check out the video for more.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Nike, Nudd, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy, World Cup
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Behind the scenes of Nike's World Cup spot

Since Nike's "Write the Future" spot came out last week, many in the industry have come down with a bad case of ad envy. The epic ad gets the behind-the-scenes treatment in the four-minute video below. It shows director Alejandro Iñárritu discussing the concept behind the video, and features interviews with Wayne Rooney and Didier Drogba. The Wieden + Kennedy creative team don't get any screen time to tell how the idea originated ­or what kind of production budget it took to get it done.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Filed under Nike, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy, World Cup
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Nike glimpses future in epic World Cup spot

If this doesn't get you in the World Cup spirit, nothing will. It's Nike's new three-minute "Write the Future" spot by Wieden + Kennedy, featuring some of the world's top players seeing into the future, Dead Zone-like, and glimpsing the consequences of their play at this year's tournament. Watch it here, at a column width that does it a little more justice. If it's not the best soccer commercial ever made, I don't know what is. Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney—the former Man U teammates and famous foes in that fateful England-Portugal quarterfinal in 2006—are the main stars here, though there are many others, including non-soccer heroes Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant and Homer Simpson. Alejandro G. Iñarritu (Babel, 21 Grams) was the director. The only possible gripe you could have is that the commercial also prominently features Brazil's Ronaldinho. Alas, he didn't make the cut for this year's team.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Nike, Nudd, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy
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Nike CEO defends Tiger Woods commercial

Here's Nike CEO Mark Parker speaking about Tiger Woods at last week's Innovation Uncensored conference in New York, hosted by Fast Company. Asked how tough it's been to stick by Woods from a PR standpoint, Parker says it actually "hasn't been that difficult"—that they've supported him, plain and simple, and been consistent about that. He goes on to talk about Wieden + Kennedy's controversial Nike ad with the Earl Woods voiceover, and is obviously thrilled to have created "clearly one of the most polarizing ads I think that we've had out in a while."

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Golf, Nike, Nudd, Wieden + Kennedy
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Adweek's Barbara Lippert on Nike's Tiger ad

On CBS's The Early Show this morning, Adweek critic Barbara Lippert offered her take on Wieden's new Nike ad with Tiger Woods. For Barbara, the commercial is "powerful, creepy and cynical, but it does what Nike needed to do." See the video after the jump.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

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Filed under Celebrity endorsements, Golf, Nike, Nudd, Wieden + Kennedy
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Nike unveils embarrassing new Woods spot

Here's the new Nike spot from Wieden + Kennedy that broke Wednesday ahead of Tiger Woods's return at the Masters. It's pretty cringeworthy. It shows Woods soberly looking into the camera, as you hear his late father Earl. "I want to find out what your thinking was," Earl says. "I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?" It's comical that Nike is now sponsoring Woods's atonement, which of course cheapens it—and then you throw Earl Woods into the mix, and it cheapens him, too. Woods isn't the devil, but he did embarrass himself and his sport—did they consider maybe not packaging that into a stylish and "meaningful" 30-second sales pitch? For all his talk about being more humble, this ad shows that Woods hasn't changed, and explains a lot about how he got himself in so much trouble in the first place. UPDATE: Jason Piroth puts it more succinctly. In one sentence, in fact.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Celebrity endorsements, Golf, Nike, Nudd, Wieden + Kennedy
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Dwyane Wade fills new Nike spot with dread

This Nike spot from Wieden + Kennedy, casting Dwyane Wade as a defender's ultimate bad dream, is a faux-spooky visual feast that's more compelling than most horror-movie trailers. The scary-movie details are transported to the basketball court with terrific effect and plunge the proceedings into a deliciously demonic realm. We've got dancing tiles on the parquet floor, an evil fog that's building in intensity, D-Wade's eerily advancing shadow and, in what's never a good sign, his sinister glowing eyes. With all that, the guy standing between Wade and the hoop should get the message and join the fans, cheerleaders and courtside media in bolting from the arena posthaste. Since it's supposed to be a nightmare, maybe he's glued to the spot. Whatever the reason, he's going to regret taking this particular charge, though the buzzards perched on the backboard will be glad he did. Via Adland.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Celebrity endorsements, Gianatasio, NBA, Nike, Wieden + Kennedy
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Yankee fans infatuated with (maybe) Nike ad

In the afterglow of their team's World Series victory, fans of the New York Yankees have been passing around what looks like a Nike ad, listing 15 reasons why the Yankees make their otherwise apparently quite shitty big-city lives bearable. The ad, with an image of Mariano Rivera, is done in the same style as some Nike Sportswear posters seen around NYC during the playoffs, though it's unclear if it's an official Nike creation. There's an apostrophe missing, for one thing. But Yankee fans will forgive just about anything these days. Says one: "I think they're just ignoring punctuation marks altogether for aesthetic purposes."

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Previously on AdFreak:
Oops. Macy's thinks Phillies won the Series

Filed under Baseball, Nike, Nudd
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Jordan's son to wear Nikes on Adidas team

Michael Jordan's son Marcus, a freshman guard at the University of Central Florida, wants to wear his dad's Nike Air Jordan sneakers. In Chemistry 101, that's probably fine. On the court, however, it's a problem, as Adidas has a six-year, $3 million contract with the university to outfit its athletes across all of its sports. "It's a level of importance with the Jordan Brand and my family," the player says. "It's no disrespect to Adidas. I have a high level of respect for adidas, but I'm going to be wearing Jordan shoes. I'm wearing the Adidas uniform and all my other UCF gear is Adidas, but the shoes are going to be Jordan Brand." According to the Associated Press, the university is working with Adidas to determine "how this unique set of circumstances will work for both parties." Given the inordinate amount of free publicity the "controversy" is generating for both brands, I'd say those circumstances are working just fine so far. UPDATE: It looks like Adidas is pulling its $3 million from UCF over the sneaker flap. Maybe Mike Sr. will step up to the line and foot the bill. If the school offers to rename its athletic center after MJ, the surly egomaniac might even be a sport and pony up $3 million per foot. Well, not Pony exactly...

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Adidas, Controversy, Footwear, Gianatasio, Nike
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Does Adidas not care about Melanie Oudin?

Melanie Oudin's success at the U.S. Open appears to have taken even her sponsor, Adidas, by surprise. The unheralded young American, who has reached the quarterfinals by defeating three highly ranked Russians in a row, has been getting extra attention for her funky yellow-and-pink Adidas sneakers, which she customized herself at the Mi Adidas site. It's a marketer's dream—she even put the word "Believe" on the shoe, where lesser mortals would have just put their name. But Adidas doesn't seem to be doing much to capitalize. The Mi Adidas homepage still shows Sam Querrey, the other young American whom Adidas invited to wear customized shoes for this Open. He lost on Saturday. (Oudin does front the women's section of the site, and the yellow-and-pink model is the default, so that's a start.) Meanwhile, over at the main Adidas Tennis site, there's no sign of Oudin at all. The focus there is on Ana Ivanovic, Dinara Safina and Caroline Wozniacki. Ivanovic and Safina both crashed out of the tournament already. Wozniacki, from Denmark, will play Oudin in the quarterfinals on Wednesday, and will be public enemy No. 1 for a day in New York. Sure, Oudin's success could be fleeting—all the more reason to move quickly. Adidas needs to step it up, or someone else might swoop in. As you can see below, it's awfully easy to whip up a quick Nike ad. UPDATE: An Adidas rep e-mailed. She says the Mi Adidas site was "in the process of being updated as you were posting." And indeed, Oudin is now on the homepage.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

See also:
Yesterday's stars never die in U.S. Open ads

Filed under Adidas, Footwear, Nike, Nudd, Tennis
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Nike and Wieden pay tribute to '90s hip-hop

Back in the '90s, it seemed like pro athletes were lining up for the chance to put out terrible rap albums. Now, Nike and Wieden + Kennedy revisit those days with four NBA stars who are just as bad on the mike—but at least seem to realize it. "Don't Criticize (Hyperize)" is a bizarre and endearingly subtle parody of '90s hip-hop featuring Rashard "Ice-O" Lewis, Andre "Chief Blocka" Iguodala, Kevin "Velvet Hoop" Durant and the always awesome Mo Williams, who claims one of the best rap pseudonyms ever with "Fog Raw." At first blush, the song is pretty painful, but it's worth a few watches just to catch the endless references to decade-old fads. And for Lewis's top-notch lyric, "If you like staying on the ground, maybe you should wrestle."

—Posted by David Griner

See also:
Nike's in-your-face Hyperdunk ads rejected
Dwight Howard sick of the Kobe/LeBron ads

Filed under Basketball, Griner, Music, Nike, Sports, Wieden + Kennedy
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Ice Cube and skateboarding, together at last

When Ice Cube has a good day, it involves a lot of drugs, sex, gambling and basketball. When professional skateboarder Paul Rodriguez has a good day, he apparently just rides around town doing fancy tricks. You can tell whose day is supreme at the end of this new spot for Nike Skateboarding, which is promoting Rodriguez's third shoe design. An extended version of the video is set to debut on Nike's site at the end of this month. In the longer version, it may be harder to tell if Rodriguez truly had a good day, but thankfully we have this handy flowchart to help us figure it out.

—Posted by David Griner

Filed under Griner, Nike, Skateboarding
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Wieden's Neil Christie smells another rip-off

Neil Christie, managing director of Wieden + Kennedy in London, is a hawk for any advertising that resembles anything his agency has done. Nine months ago, he dug up a Singapore ad that had a bread-making sequence he found eerily similar to some food porn that Wieden did in the Middle East. Needless to say, many dismissed Christie as a crank. He's undeterred. Today, he's putting the ripoff label on a print ad for Sure deodorant that shows a cricket player pointing his bat at the viewer with the tagline, "Not without a fight." As it happens, Wieden used the same line a year ago in a Nike ad featuring English rugby players looking rather menacing on the cliffs of Dover. It's anybody's guess whether the Unilever brand knowingly ripped off Wieden or some creatives simply subconsciously absorbed the image and message (that is the point of advertising, yes?). But Christie does seem to have a better case this time around.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Filed under Controversy, Morrissey, Nike, Wieden + Kennedy
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Sports stars line up to be Federer's fanboys

Nike has gotten pretty good at the quick-turnaround ads for major sports events, the most recent of which was Roger Federer's record-breaking 15th Grand Slam win this weekend. The charming homage shown above features an athletic A-list that only Nike could muster: Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, John McEnroe, Serena Williams and, of course, the dethroned-but-deferential Pete Sampras. I'm guessing that Andy Roddick would have been happy to make an appearance too, if he hadn't been busy fending off Federer in a showdown that lasted longer than a Francis Ford Coppola movie.

—Posted by David Griner

Filed under Griner, Nike, Tennis, Wieden + Kennedy, Wimbledon
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