Monday, December 6, 2004

Nike, You Should Have Listened To Me





In early November, I posted an entry on Hanzi Smatter pointing out the numerous errors Nike made in their basketball ad campaign featuring NBA star Lebron James. The slogan for the “trans-cultural” ad campaign was humorously translated as "extinguish fire but with base".



I have also emailed Nike about the mistakes they have made, but I got their cold shoulder of “we will look into it”.



Today, both BBC News and Jeremy’s Danwei.org broke the news that China has officially banned Nike’s ad based on “it offends national dignity”.



Even though, personally I was not offended by Nike’s marketing. It really surprised me that with such large and well known company, their advertising department really does not do a whole lot of research.



I hate to say this, but Nike, you really should have listened to me.



4 comments:

  1. did the host read the news?
    chinese government banned Nike's TV ad in china. that TV ad has some black guy play basketball with some chinese person, chinese dragon and image from chinese buddhism. that TV ad has nothing to do with this print ad.

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  2. One may be print and one may be TV, but they're both part of the same ad campaign.

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