If you can't take the heat, stay out of Miami

I don't want to get too sports-heavy here, but anyone who follows basketball probably has an opinion on the LeBron James saga. Regardless of what you think about his decision to leave Cleveland for Miami, and what you think about the subsequent fan reaction to it, I think we can probably all admit that this was not the best response.



I'm sure LeBron felt stung by the reaction he got upon leaving Cleveland. He no doubt felt that he had done all he could there - in 2007, he dragged the team to a spot in the Finals almost singlehandedly, and won 60+ games in each of the last two years with improved but hardly championship-caliber teammates.

But this ad just comes off as whiny and petulant. LeBron recently gave a statement in which he said that he could understand why Cleveland fans were upset - that's good, if months late. But really this, this post I'm making, isn't about what he's said in the media. It's about this ad, in particular, lest we get off-topic here. And this ad is stupid.

It's stupid for the same reason the Charles Barkley ad that James quotes - the "I am not a role model" one - was also kind of stupid. While I appreciate Barkley's point on some levels, the fact is that he's appearing in a commercial when he says it. He's a paid endorser of a product. And the whole point of paying an athlete to endorse your product is to trade on said athlete's fame and, yes, their position as a role model to sell that product. Barkley may genuinely not have wanted to be a role model, but Nike made him one anyway.

And the same thing is happening here. James, via Nike, was marketed as little short of the Second Coming in Cleveland. Don't believe me?



Yikes. To be fair, that ad doesn't actually mention Cleveland, but you get the point. You can see the huge size of the "We are all witnesses" banner that falls in the ad at the top. James was pitched as nothing less than the savior of basketball in Cleveland. And so when he left - when he decided, perhaps, that basketball in Cleveland was beyond saving, that he'd given it his best shot but now that he had more of a choice he was happy to go play in a nicer city with some friends of his on a better team, thanks - he was vilified by people who felt betrayed.

Should they have felt betrayed by LeBron? Maybe, maybe not. But this ad trades on mocking and/or complaining about that sense of betrayal, and it's a betrayal that was stoked by Nike itself.



Not a role model? Uh, hardly. This ad portrays James as the ultimate role model, one capable of affecting the entire population with his behavior.

"Should I be who you want me to be?" James asks, with more than a hint of sarcasm, in the latest ad. The obvious answer is no; LeBron James, like anyone else, can be whoever he wants to be. But as a man whose job, even as he speaks those words, is to pitch sneakers to teenagers... well, the answer is kind of yes. If you want to be a multimillionaire pitchman, you have to put on a face that the public will appreciate. It comes with the territory. LeBron James the basketball star and LeBron James the Nike spokesman are not separate entities. LeBron James the Nike spokesman is most definitely a role model - or anyway, he is in the eyes of Nike, because if he weren't he would be of no value to them. And if LeBron James the Nike spokesman is a role model, LeBron James the basketball star is a role model. And if he wants both of those personas to exist, fully functioning, as beloved as they are capable of being and not loathed by a spurned fanbase... well, then, yes, LeBron. You have to be who we want you to be.

And if you don't want to be? That's cool too. Just don't run back to Nike to make an ad about how none of it is your fault. I don't think you're going to sell too many shoes that way.

Like Rainn on your wedding day

Rainn Wilson, you're better than this.



This is just one of a series of commercials, each as stupid as the other, assumedly designed to tie in with the Women's World Cup, going on right now. I have several problems with this ad, as you might guess, since that is why we do this site.

For starters, what kind of a joke is "Jim Mike"? The fact that his last name is also a first name has to be a joke of some kind, right? Yet there is nothing at all funny about it. I suppose it could be an oblique reference to the clueless boss character on "The Office," who has two first names in both versions (David Brent in the UK and Michael Scott in the US), and on the American version of which Wilson gained his present fame. But that only makes it a stupid joke with a point.

For that matter, why did this character need a name at all? And why is he the focal point of the commercial, and of all the ads in this series? It's pretty ironic that a series of ads suggesting you pay more attention to the US women's soccer team does nothing so much as draw all your attention away from the US women's soccer team. You know why they're the best team we've never heard of? Because Rainn Wilson just keeps yelling and you don't let them talk. Here's how the pitch meeting probably went:

Exec 1: So, we're thinking Rainn Wilson. You know, Dwight from "The Office."
US Team's Agent: Oh, cool, I love "The Office!" What would he be doing?
Exec 2: He'd be like, running around, being all crazy. And the team would be kind of staring at him, like, "Who's this dork?"
Agent: Okay...
Exec 1: Then, at the end, they'd all be kind of glaring at the camera.
Agent: Would they say anything?
Exec 2: I feel like "talking" would kind of ruin the mystique.
Agent: But this is an ad about how bad it is that no one's heard of the team...
Exec 1: Yeah.
Agent: And the team is just going to be standing around.
Exec 2: If it helps, think of them as the "straight man" - like the Stan Laurel of this ad.
Agent: Is that even remotely accurate?
Exec 2: Well, no.
Exec 1: Okay, six words: "Rainn Wilson in a sports bra."
Agent: Oh wow, is that the time?

The further irony of this commercial is that the US women's soccer team really isn't that invisible, or at least hasn't been in recent memory. The ad even makes indirect reference to Brandi Chastain's infamous shirt removal at the 1999 World Cup, which everyone and their mother has seen by this point and which helped make the women's national team a household name, if only for a few weeks.

I also hate this ad because it uses one of my least favorite devices - the "here's a guy doing something stupid and/or wacky, and it's not really funny, but the joke is that everyone else in the ad thinks it's not funny, too" ploy. It's like a cheap trick to build common ground. "Hey, you thought the guy in a sports bra was stupid, right? Well, so did the US women's soccer team! Look, they kicked a ball at him! Don't you love them now?"

Brief commercial break...

If this were a blog about good ads, we'd probably need a separate section just for Nike. I don't know of another brand that continually produces such watchable advertising. And aside from "the most famous brand in world", there's really no other company that can represent itself with so little effort -- in this case, with just a casual, curvaceous graphic.

This spot from '04 is probably my favorite of Nike's oeuvre:



Arresting visuals, dramatic cinematography, a moving soundtrack (created by agency Wieden+Kennedy for the commercial), heartwarming images of triumph (when he's passing the sick children.) The 30-second version may have lost a bit of the original's luster, but it still had the main scenes and the music. How can you not love the shots at the end where the camera is a block away from Lance and the other bikers, following the action in breaks between buildings?

And the very end?

Just do it. (Swoosh)

When you spend decades buying ad space and use the same slogan and same logo, over and over, this is your reward -- paying off a commercial with a three-word sentence and a little half-moon drawing.

The spot, directed by Jake Scott (son of Ridley Scott), was much lauded during its time, and particularly beloved by sportswriters. I won't bother mentioning the accolades here, but just Google "Nike Magnet Commercial," and you'll see what I'm talking about. How many shoes did it sell? Is that even the point of this commercial? Nike, like Coke, needs to keep up awareness and maintain a positive brand image in the consumer's mind. So the next time they're at the shoe store, they'll see Nike shoes and think they're looking at a good product.

This commercial entertains, inspires, and generally makes you feel good. When you see it's Nike, you might even think "Maybe they actually care." They don't, but we can pretend!
For an amusing, and thorough, compilation of some of Nike's best work, go here.