Guilty, Of Being Nike

Stop reading if you’ve just eaten.

Here’s a cracking example of a major corporation trying to appropriate a genuine cultural artefact in order to “move more product”.

Nike, who most of us know are heavily involved in the exploitation and oppression of sweat shop labourers and child labourers, have used the cover art and logo of the band Minor Threat to advertise some crappy skateboarding event (I did have a link to the flyer here, but it has been removed amid all the controversy). In doing so they have failed to seek permission from the band, the bands record label Discord, the photographer who created the original image and the designer of the original logo.

This is know in the trade as “Guerrilla Marketing”, wherein large companies attempt to appeal to “counter-culture demographics” (i.e rich kids who like skateboarding and Hip Hop and get plenty of pocket money from Mommy) by appropriating counter-culture images, values and publicity tactics (for example flyering).

I’m sure whoever came up with that idea and the idea for this particular outrage is patting him or herself on the back and counting the cash. How must it feel to be part of manufacturing corporate cool? Pretty good I suppose, until the long dark nights when you wake with a start; vague, haunting dreams of what you could have done and could have been clinging threadbare to the remnants of your bar-coded brain.

I know you feel something inside when you fuck up, when you hurt someone or when you make a dumb mistake that costs you. I wonder what you feel when your last shred of dignity, your last vestiges of value as a human being disappear? I wonder how it feels to sell yourself to child oppressors like Nike for a bit of money.

Meanwhile, the irony of kids in this hemisphere being duped into thinking it’s “cool” to buy Nike trainers made by exhausted, destitute children from the other hemisphere becomes just another example of the sad, absurd and evil world we live in.

If you buy or wear Nike or any major fashion brand you align yourself with exploiters and oppressors. You hate third world kids, or might as well. It’s that simple.

Apathy is just not good enough anymore. The enemy is fully mobilised, as I’m sure Jesus, Jello Biafra and the Ghost of Joe Strummer will tell you in their next run of Adidas advertisements.