Nike: Big shoes to fill

When Nike took a stand last year, I saw it as an excellent brand play. While that hasn’t changed, recent developments based on LeBron James and the protests in Hong Kong are proving to be a test of character for the brand, because billions of dollars of revenue from China are at stake. Despite the high stakes, this could prove to be an invaluable lesson for the brand on how to shape its personality to navigate the storms that lie ahead. The die is cast, and Nike now needs to fill its own big shoes.

Brand agencies redux

One of the ways to measure brand communication is to view it through the prisms of effectiveness and efficiency. I sometimes get the feeling that with time, mass media became more of an efficiency game. Then social technologies came along and forced the marketer to acknowledge (the forgotten) effectiveness criterion. That would explain the resistance […]