Nike’s New Campaign Wants You to Ignore Politics and… Buy More Nikes?

At a time when opinions and knowledge are more important than ever.

Nike isn't a company known for its political stances. Other than hosting President Obama's announcement of the nearly dead Trans-Pacific Partnership (the same trade deal that got New Balance into hot water recently) the sportswear juggernaut is known more for its inspirational, get-you-back-in-the-gym type of promos than parking itself in any national political discourse. So it's a little surprising that Nike's newest ad calls for its customers, in so many words, to stop voicing or paying attention to opinions and instead, go running!

Social media is a suffocating black hole of hot takes, Twitter fights, and a whole lot of misinformation right now, which isn't necessarily the healthiest use of one's time—so we get where Nike is coming from. It's also fair to say that lots of people spend too much time forming opinions based on said fake news.

But when we're living at a time when our President-elect is dedicated to validating conspiracy theories, refusing to take in valuable intelligence information, and launching petty attacks at union leaders as a way to gaslight the public. Distinguishing fact from fiction has basically become a full-time job at this point. Thus, information and opinions are, as they've always been, extremely important tools against not just Trump, but any injustice in the world. They're worth paying attention to.

The notion that being informed and politically engaged is less valuable than jogging doesn’t just come across as questionable—it’s downright tone deaf. Nike’s assumption that their customer base is made up of people who can afford to ignore what’s happening in this country is downright offensive to the hundreds of millions of Americans who are worried about four years under a Trump administration might affect their lives. Telling people to turn a blind eye to the political conversation is a bad look, especially for Nike, since it plays into the “evil corporation” narrative, in which multi-billion dollar businesses prefer uneducated consumers to ones that ask questions. (Remember, in the early '90s it was opinionated consumers who first exposed the less-than-great working conditions Asian Nike factory workers faced.) But really, it’s just odd that the campaign seems to contend that thinking about politics and running are mutually exclusive. (We're sure more than a few Nike customers enjoy a nice politics podcast on their morning jog.)

At the end of the day, Nike is just a company trying to sell products, and this misfire of a Twitter campaign is simply in the interest of that goal. And while the Portland-based behemoth does spend massive amounts of money on sustainable innovation and making strides to lessen their carbon footprint, we think they're "Just Do It" motto should apply to everything in one's life—not just buying stuff.

Up Next: Trump Threw the Economy in the Toilet

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