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Product cover image for Brand Activism: Nike and Colin Kaepernick

Brand Activism: Nike and Colin Kaepernick

Avery, Jill; Pauwels, Koen

Product #:519046
Supplier:Harvard Business School
Discipline:Marketing
Setting:North America;United States, 2018
Details:Case (PDF) • 36 pages • 2018-12-17 (Rev: 2019-09-13)

Subjects:

AdvertisingBrand equityBrandingMarketingMarketing communicationsMarketing strategyPoliticsSocial mediaSales and marketingBrand managementGovernmentWeb-based technologiesSales and marketingMarketing

Industries:

Goods, trade, and consumer services

Geography:

North AmericaUnited States
Your Price:$11.64

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Nike's selection of politically polarizing Colin Kaepernick as the spokesperson for the thirtieth anniversary of its iconic Just Do It campaign catapulted the brand into the media spotlight and made it a political flashpoint for consumers across America. Would the choice of Kaepernick positively or negatively affect Nike's business results or just generate a lot of social media chatter? As Nike's management team watched some people burn their sneakers in protest on YouTube and others applaud the company's behavior on Facebook, they wondered whether inserting Nike into the middle of a heated political debate was the right thing to do or the most reckless action Nike's brand stewards had ever taken, putting Nike's $30 billion brand asset at risk? After all, on social media, it was easy to say that one would boycott or buycott a brand due to one's political beliefs, but in the marketplace, other purchase criteria often reigned supreme.

Learning Objectives

Multiple studies have claimed that Millennial and post-Millennial consumers are more socially conscious generations than those that have come before them and have a strong desire to engage in conscious capitalism, using their purchase and consumption behavior to show their support for brands and companies that share their beliefs and values. As a result, many companies are experimenting with social mission branding, values-based brand storytelling, and corporate social responsibility programs to try to better reach and engage younger consumers. This case allows students to debate the opportunities and challenges associated with brand activism -- aligning a brand with a particular political cause or value system. Specific learning objectives include: Debating whether brands should remain apolitical or engage political narratives and causes in their brand storytelling. Identifying the consumer, brand, and cause conditions under which political branding is likely to be more and less successful. Analyzing the return-on-investment of political branding to understand how to measure the success of these types of campaigns and to understand how social media chatter and proclaimed boycotts and buycotts translate into market success and/or failure. Understanding how to identify and vet political and social causes to find those that demonstrate strategic fit for the brand and its narratives.
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Case Study: Brand Activism: Nike and Colin Kaepernick (English version) | Ivey Publishing