What was Nike thinking?

I’ve been asked a version of the title of this week’s column by every Republican I know since they came out with the Fall ad campaign that features Colin Kaepernick. People in this part of the country, along with other locations, were shocked and dismayed at the news, not understanding at all what provoked Nike into doing it.

What shocked and surprised me was the shock and surprise by others towards Nike in the first place. Nike is a multinational company, doing business with countries worldwide. They are the largest supplier and manufacturer of athletic shoes, apparel and other sports equipment. Due to that, their brand value worldwide in 2018 is 28.03 billion dollars and their revenue worldwide is 36.4 billion dollars.

They aren’t novices at playing the capitalist game of making money.

But in talking to people, it seemed like they thought that Nike just launched this new campaign on some kind of a whim. Did they not know that market research went into their decision? Did they not think that Nike knew they would lose customers over the decision but gain others? And the answer to the latter question was the answer to all the questions surrounding Nike’s decision.

They obviously proved through their market research before announcing their decision that they would make money with the new ad campaign. How could they do that you ask? By focusing on two types of customers, the rich and the young. In other words, customers in states like Nebraska failed to matter because we didn’t contribute enough to Nike’s bottom line. Nike’s focus is on urban areas with significant percentages of young people living there because they’re the ones most likely to buy Nike products.

Nike knew the older, more conservative population would be turned off by Nike featuring an ad campaign with Colin Kaepernick as the focus. But they also knew that urban dwellers and young people wouldn’t be. So they chose to focus on the latter group and ignore the former group. Which means they don’t care what you do with their products. You can burn them up, give them away, throw them away or promise to never buy another item from Nike and they don’t care. Because people of this region typically buy one pair of athletic shoes a year and the affluent urban dwellers buy 10. And because the urban population continues to grow and the rural population continues to decline, their new ad campaign was a no-brainer.

Because there are so many Republicans that live in this part of the United States, there is a tendency for them to over-rank themselves in terms of importance. But in looking at the raw numbers, companies and corporations don’t. They quickly see where their profit population lives and concentrates on them, leaving residents of sparsely populated Republican states in the lurch.

One thing Republicans and corporations share a love interest in is capitalism and the bottom line. A corporation will usually choose a course of action that promises them the biggest bang for their buck and that’s what Nike has done this time. The fact that most Republicans disagree with them doesn’t matter to them.

They’re in the business of selling products, not ideologies.