In the space of one month, Nike Inc. ads featuring basketball star LeBron James slaying a Chinese dragon and a kung fu master have been banned in China and met with a flurry of criticism in Singapore, key markets for the sneaker giant, which hopes to further expand in Asia.
While Nike quickly backtracked and apologized for the ads, the manufacturer has a history of edgy sales messages -- a strategy that has helped endear Nike to youth by positioning the company as a corporate rebel.
"Nike has a well-deserved reputation for sailing close to the edge in its advertising -- so it's no surprise that a Nike ad courts controversy," said marketing professor John Quelch, a senior associate dean at the Harvard Business School.
Controversy has been one of many ways in which Nike has made its brand stand out, a strategy company officials have been blunt about in the past. In 2000, then-Nike vice president Charlie Denson responded to criticism of Nike's racy Olympic ads by saying: "We have a history of making controversial ads, and we certainly have succeeded in that."
That year, NBC yanked a Nike ad in which track star Suzy Hamilton narrowly escaped a masked chainsaw killer -- a commercial intended as a spoof on horror movies, but which critics said glorified violence against women.
Nike drew attention during the buildup to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with its commercial showing an exhausted runner vomiting and a boxer dripping with blood. "You don't win silver," the ad read. "You lose gold."
In Asia, where Nike posted US$1.36 billion in sales last year -- or 13 percent of its total revenue -- making the brand stand out from others is crucial, industry observers say.
Sales were up 19 percent from 2002, when the company's revenue in Asia was about US$1.1 billion.
In China, the TV commercial offended government regulators because it showed a US sports icon defeating the dragon, a symbol of Chinese culture, and the martial arts master, a symbol of national pride.
In Singapore, a similar ad sequence was also deemed offensive, but for a different reason.
Commuters in the city-state recently found over 700 bus terminals plastered with graffiti-like posters of James. Singapore still considers graffiti an offense punishable by flogging.
"We told Nike this is what the impact would be," said Henry Goh, sales marketing director in the Singapore office of Clear Channel, which owns the bus terminals.
"They said: `This is what we want,'" Goh said, explaining that his office fielded calls and e-mails from more than 50 fuming commuters, almost all adults.
But older people aren't the target market for Nike.
"We heard that teenagers liked it so much they tried to take some of the posters off the bus shelters as souvenirs," Goh said.
Similarly, in China, Nike spokes-woman Shelley Peng said the ads, while upsetting to older consumers, were also popular with teens.
"It was not Nike's intent to show disrespect to the Chinese culture," Peng said in a prepared statement, which stressed that the ads were meant to inspire youth to overcome obstacles, as LeBron does when he slays the kung fu master and the green fire-spewing dragons, as well as other video game style villains.
"Kung fu and the dragon, both are symbols of national pride," countered Sujian Guo, the editor of the Journal of Chinese Political Science in San Francisco and a former policy analyst for the Communist Party's Central Committee in China.
"It feels like American culture has defeated Chinese culture," he said. "American basketball has defeated Chinese culture and they feel offended and humiliated."
The ads "could be an ignorant mistake, or a marketing misfire," said Bruce Newman, professor of marketing at DePaul University in Chicago. "But it could also be a case of knowing that if they can connect with a young audience -- which I'm guessing is in the hundreds of millions, there could be a swelling of demand such that they could care less about what the government says."
NO HUMAN ERROR: After the incident, the Coast Guard Administration said it would obtain uncrewed aerial vehicles and vessels to boost its detection capacity Authorities would improve border control to prevent unlawful entry into Taiwan’s waters and safeguard national security, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday after a Chinese man reached the nation’s coast on an inflatable boat, saying he “defected to freedom.” The man was found on a rubber boat when he was about to set foot on Taiwan at the estuary of Houkeng River (後坑溪) near Taiping Borough (太平) in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), authorities said. The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) northern branch said it received a report at 6:30am yesterday morning from the New Taipei City Fire Department about a
IN BEIJING’S FAVOR: A China Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Chinese maritime police would continue to carry out law enforcement activities in waters it claims The Philippines withdrew its coast guard vessel from a South China Sea shoal that has recently been at the center of tensions with Beijing. BRP Teresa Magbanua “was compelled to return to port” from Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Shoal, 仙濱暗沙) due to bad weather, depleted supplies and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Jay Tarriela said yesterday in a post on X. The Philippine vessel “will be in tiptop shape to resume her mission” after it has been resupplied and repaired, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who heads the nation’s maritime council, said
REGIONAL STABILITY: Taipei thanked the Biden administration for authorizing its 16th sale of military goods and services to uphold Taiwan’s defense and safety The US Department of State has approved the sale of US$228 million of military goods and services to Taiwan, the US Department of Defense said on Monday. The state department “made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale” to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US for “return, repair and reshipment of spare parts and related equipment,” the defense department’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a news release. Taiwan had requested the purchase of items and services which include the “return, repair and reshipment of classified and unclassified spare parts for aircraft and related equipment; US Government
More than 500 people on Saturday marched in New York in support of Taiwan’s entry to the UN, significantly more people than previous years. The march, coinciding with the ongoing 79th session of the UN General Assembly, comes close on the heels of growing international discourse regarding the meaning of UN Resolution 2758. Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “only lawful representative of China.” It resulted in the Republic of China (ROC) losing its seat at the UN to the PRC. Taiwan has since been excluded from