Quoted in "How historians got Nike to pull an ad campaign — in under six hours" (WaPo).
“In an environment where confederate monuments are so visible in the news,” Jenna Magnuski tweeted, “ . . . how?!” “What appallingly tone-deaf, historically ignorant slogan will @NikeTrail choose next?” Jeremy Neely asked. “The Trail of Tears?”Even though Googling would have avoided the stupid gaffe, the Wapo column (by Megan Kate Nelson), uses this as an occasion to bolster the fading academic departments: "business majors need to take humanities classes and... corporations need to hire humanities majors."
Historians were not the only ones protesting. Sports and political commentator Keith Olbermann replied with hashtags: “#ShouldaGoogledIt #FireEverybody.”...
Included in their skill sets are the ability to do comprehensive research and to provide historical context and analysis on the language companies might want to use to sell their products. While an advertising degree might equip someone to know if marketing language might lure in potential consumers, it does not offer the historical training to catch this sort of mistake before it is made.Would you trust a history major to protect your company from gaffes like this? Would you pay a history major a salary to do that job? It seems much more efficient just to tell everyone that there are endless things that might be important that you don't know, so google any slogan. You should google not just to see if there's anything in history but to check whether anyone else has used it in any context that makes it unwise. It could be someone else's slogan. I could be a song lyric or a book title. Just google it! So easy. Sorry, historians, this expertise that activated you over "The Lost Cause" isn't a reason to put you or your students on the staff of "corporations." That's a... futile enterprise.
ADDED: Someone managed to grab the ad and was kind enough to send it to me. The idea is getting lost...
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105 comments:
Yeah Trump didn't google "America First" and look what happened.
Though I'm glad he rescued that one.
I was a history major. I could do better than that.
And, of course, didn’t the Nike lawyers vet this for trademark or other IP problems.
Nike needs to fire the ad agency and the marketing people.
The humanities are a lost cause.
I was a history major in addition to having an MBA and a Phd. I worked for IBM, ATT and two of the final Big 4 accounting firms. My history degree was as much of value to the development of my career as my MBA and doctorate.
So this IS about Trump again, right? Haha.
Maybe they could recycle Never Forget. Or is it too soon?
Little known historical fact: "Just do it" was a phrase used by Nazi concentration camp officials to boost their morale.
Humanities majors should be required to take more economics classes to we don't end up with fewer moronic policy solutions.
A couple of accounting classes wouldn't hurt, either.
Liberal Arts and Athletics are critically important to any technical degree.
Nike might want to avoid anything about grit and determination for a while.
The opposite is also true... to get a college degree, you should have to take bonehead versions of calculus, physics, biology and chemistry.
Would you trust a history major to protect your company from gaffes like this?
Depends on when they got their degree. Forty years ago, perhaps yes. Recently? Oh, Hell no. Someone with a recently-acquired degree in history probably knows less history than an engineer who took two classes forty or fifty years ago to satisfy his gen. ed. requirement.
Would you pay a history major a salary to do that job?
As long as I don’t have to pay the person more than what I pay the janitors.
They should change their name to Mercury
I'm taking some Broadcast/Advertising classes, and I think they're great. At least at my school, they are brutally honest. Yes, you will offend some people. Yes, you must stereotype. Yes, you must target a certain demographic, even if it means alienating others. It's nice to be able to work/study outside of the confinement of political correctness.
Save your Confederate money boys. The Nike shoes are going help Rebels to rise again. The so called Civil War was officially named the War of the Southern Rebellion.
Wait, wasn't a lost cause worth fighting for from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"?
Hard to tell now what's forbidden in our Brave New World.
Never hire a Lefty for a for-profit corporation.
Nike commercial in What Women Want (2000)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNiRK9TKumI
overlooked in the film is how much depends on Mel Gibson narrating it.
Was it Torquemada who first said “No pain,no gain”?
I think the advertiser determined plenty of leg, and breasts, is much cheaper than hiring someone with a degree in humanities.
Instead of hiring humanities majors we might remind business, science, and engineering majors that other disciplines are important, too. In my vie scientists and engineers tend to have a better liberal education (in the proper sense of the term) than do humanities majors!
How to find out if GOOGLE can be relied on?!
"In an environment where confederate monuments are so visible in the news"
Yeah! They're springing up all over the place!
Oh ... wait. You guys just suddenly decided to start freaking out over statues that had been around for many decades. Because in the age of Trump, they are painful reminders that this is still a white supremacist nation, and you are triggered by them.
"#FireEverybody"
Because that's how we roll nowadays. It's not enough for the boss to say publicly, "We're pulling that slogan. We feel pretty silly it got out there at all. I screwed up. Sorry"; then to pull in the people responsible, chew their asses out in private, and everybody drives on.
No. Fire Everybody. Because if you're not ruining lives, you're just insufficiently committed to the cause, and maybe you need to be fired.
When asked how much Nike paid its ad agency for the slogan, a spokesman answered "Six million, never again."
Nike is executing a brilliant marketing campaign. They get tons of free advertising out of it, which leads to increased sales.
Why should they care what the offended think? They don't buy their overpriced sneakers.
Advertising major in college teaches the difference between:
Save up to fifty percent on ladies undergarments this week at Victoria’s Secret.
and
This week at Victoria’s Secret women’s panties are half off.
The Lost Leftwing Cause - blaming modern day problems on events from 160 years ago.
I'm not a history major but weren't there other Lost Causes prior and subsequent to the Confederacy? Weren't the Southerners alluding to that thing with Bonnie Prince Charley? Maybe Nike was thinking about the Spanish Republican cause or the cause for the ERA for women. History has many lost causes.
New Balance all the way. Nike is for narrow-footed cucks
While I'm heaping scorn on Keith Olbermann-recommended hashtags,
"ShouldaGoogledIt"
Ah yes. Like if I Google the OK hand sign, I will learn that it is NOT OK to make this gesture. It signifies that I am either a white supremacist, or I am giving them, my allies, a nudge and a wink.
(What? You're a child of the 80s and you're remembering Eddie Murphy giving that sign with an exuberant smile? No excuse! That was before. Before Trump brought them out of the woodwork.)
Sure, Google will also steer me to some professional anti-discrimination activists saying, No it isn't. That was a hoax. Calm down. But who wants to take chances, in an environment where [pick your outrage] are so visible in the news?
"History has many lost causes."
Teaching my dog to stay, for one.
For every idiotic and insulting commercial you see on TV, 100 percent of them were approved by the client.
There are all sorts of lost causes. Some are still valid.
Mine, still very much worth pursuing, is the restoration of the Spanish Empire under the house of Bourbon.
The obsession with just that one lost cause is just another symptom of the intense parochialism of the American intelligentsia. The American mind is truly lost, there is nothing left in the American liberal arts academy but caste-politics, slogans and language taboos. No brains needed, or appreciated.
A completely decadent, mindless sub-culture that still manages to lead the rest of you around by your noses.
Since the company’s name is cultural appropriation of Greek heritage and culture, they should have to change it.
But they don’t.
They’ll just pay Colin Kaepernick a few more million to get their Woke Credits back.
Not surprising to see Olbermann call for people to be fired.
That guy is a scumbag
Howard,
There are liberal arts and there are liberal arts.
The modern American concept of liberal arts is worthless, indeed it is anti-education.
It actively discourages and erases genuine education.
It's all about the article, a lost cause vs The Lost Cause.
You want to develop the skill of critical thinking in your college graduates, require at least three semesters of Western philosophy.
Grievance Studies are part of the Humanities.
Nike is a successful company that reached its peak awhile ago. The best decision they ever made was getting Michael Jordan. It was also a great decision by him.
Under Armour and Tom Brady also a great pairing. Very successful for both.
Get their attention, generate interest, spark a desire, urge an action. Those are the four fundamentals I use when doing ads, PSA's, etc. Whether it's a :30-second spot for an industrial cleaning supply store or a 60-second spot for a hair and nail salon or a 3 minute PSA about an animal adoption fair, it pretty much always works as a sort of skeleton before you start writing copy.
“The modern American concept of liberal arts is worthless, indeed it is anti-education.
It actively discourages and erases genuine education.”
Indeed.
And start a blog buwaya!
Our overlords know nothing.
Yet they claim the power to control our rights and our money and the climate.
. . . . It was still early on March 30 when historian Amy Kohout began scrolling through her Instagram feed
See, there's your problem right there.
Haven't we reached a point in history after all of these years, where every phrase or combination of words have been used before? Never before in this history of the world have so many sissy ass people been upset so often at just about everything. Grow The Fuck Up.
The Lost Cause - desperately trying to find evidence that Russia conspired with Trump to steal our election!
Oops, wrong thread.
buwaya,
"It actively discourages and erases genuine education."
That may be, but at least it encourages fragility and the immediate appeal to an authority, who must therefore be granted ever-growing powers to crush one's adversaries, upon encountering the slightest distress.
BADuBois said...Wait, wasn't a lost cause worth fighting for from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"?
That's what I thought too. But, I'm a northerner and not a history professor.
That said, every single piece of Nike advertising copy just pisses me off.
OK Nike, here's how to turn this around: Make a video with the phase "Just Do It" moving from L to R and "Lost Cause" moving from R to L. They merge into "Just Cause," with images of marchers on the Edmund Pettis bridge in the background, and you're good to go.
This wouldn't even have been a seen as a mistake if there wasn't an overabundance of unemployed humanities majors lurking like buzzards on the internet.
People would have understood what Nike meant, felt like they didn't have to give up on themselves and went out and bought some new running shoes and some of them might have even started running in them.
Instead, people will stay home, go online and get outraged over nothing. Thanks humanities majors!
Too much left wing garbage on google. Nike would be limited to its current “just do it” and even that is now probably racist or homophobic.
I prefer the advertising genius who decided to market the Chevy Nova in mexico. That’s some funny stuff...
I don't know what the Althouse policy is on posting links to Youtube videos. Is that allowed? I've got a funny vid concerning advertising/making a commercial, but don't want to raise the ire of our hostess. I'll try, see what happens. I can totally relate to the guy in the video, I've had some long, miserable shoots where I flip out on myself because I can't get it right. It's about 5 mins long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSWUWPx2VeQ
Nike kneeled while Americans stood against persistent and progressive slavery and diversity. Social justice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Ms. Pro-Choice, tear down the walls. Save the eagles! #HateLovesAbortion
How about "Would it kill you to buy our fucking sneakers, for chrissake?"
Wait, wasn't a lost cause worth fighting for from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"?
Indeed. In a funny coincidence that movie was on TCM last night and I watched it for the first time. Here is the quote, spoken by Mr. Smith to the corrupt senator:
I guess this is just another lost cause, Mr. Paine. All you people don't know about the lost causes. Mr. Paine does. He said once they were the only causes worth fighting for. And he fought for them once, for the only reason that any man ever fights for them. Because of just one plain simple rule: 'Love thy neighbor.' And in this world today, full of hatred, a man who knows that one rule has a great trust. You know that rule, Mr. Paine. And I loved you for it, just as my father did. And you know that you fight for the lost causes harder than for any others. Yes, you even die for them. Like a man we both knew, Mr. Paine.
I'm shocked TCM would declare such a racist movie one of the "essentials"!
/s
Hard to tell now what's forbidden in our Brave New World.
I think that's the plan. Declare everything "racist" so that white people are afraid to speak at all.
Nike’s new woke slogan is “Just always get express consent before you do it.”
In old Tyme days companies used to have workers with grey hair and experience. That has been dispensed with and replaced by cheap, energetic interns and college grads. They don't know what they don't know and increasingly the public/market segment they serve doesn't either so it all evens out.
In order to develop marketable skills, history majors need to go to law school.
Sports and political commentator Keith Olbermann replied with hashtags: “#ShouldaGoogledIt #FireEverybody.”...
Olberman must have peed himself with #ThatsAMistakeICouldaMade.
'Grow The Fuck Up'
Nike should totes consider this for their next slogan.
A completely decadent, mindless sub-culture that still manages to lead the rest of you around by your noses.<
Not all of us. Some of us went to college many years ago and got pretty good educations. Right now I'm reading ":Dreadnaught" for the second time after 20 years, The problem in the present USA is that you have to educate yourself. Still the education is there if you can find it. It's just not in colleges anymore.
I learned a great deal, including what I did not want to become and how I did not want to think, at my little liberal arts college in the 90s.
I wouldn't hire a recent humanities major to watch my cats.
Mainly because Jack and Daisy would out-argue he/she to pieces and he/she would end up sobbing on the floor while the cats enjoyed porking down an entire bag of bonito flakes.
Historians aren't what they used to be.
My wife is a Humanities Professor at an HBCU in North Carolina. Art and Architectural History. I am proud to say that she is not at all the typical "Art History"-type. She does not go in for all the SJW crap, teaches her students with a firm hand (seriously, she is an almost ridiculously tough grader, I almost feel bad for the kids) and does plenty of stuff related to her field, but not directly connected to her University. Edits and contributes to countless journals, reference books and textbooks, has traveled the world to see/photograph the subjects she researches. I wish I had her career some times, but I could never tolerate the students. Many are good kids, but some are such a-holes that I wouldn't last a day before being fired/sued.
And now do St. Jude's Hospital.
"corporations need to hire humanities majors"
That coffee won't make itself.
And, no, I wouldn't trust a history major of today to do basically anything correctly.
Especially to know actual history.
I guess this is just another lost cause, Mr. Paine. All you people don't know about lost causes. Mr. Paine does. He said once they were the only causes worth fighting for, and he fought for them once, for the only reason any man ever fights for them: Because of one plain simple rule: Love thy neighbor.
Mr. Smith goes to Washington -1939. Who knew Frank Capra and Columbia's Harry Cohn supported slavery?
I'm thinking of moving to a foreign country. The USA is rapidly becoming the United States of Morons.
Any country that quotes Kieth Olbermann as an authority on anything is too stupid to live.
Nike is the official shoe of the UNLV Runnin' Rebels Athletic Department after all.
Like the brown coats in firefly who Whedon based on his reading of killer angels.
Like 98% of their, largely historically ignorant, target consumers would ever make that association. Ridiculous.
Wait until they find out that Nike was a white chick.
"Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for." - Clarence Darrow
While they are on the topic, one of the conditions of the treaty signed to end the Civil War was that the South be allowed to honor and memorialize it's heroes.
Sorry, historians, this expertise that activated you over "The Lost Cause" isn't a reason to put you or your students on the staff of "corporations.
Maybe the history majors could learn to code.
That community collage course toward journeyman electrician, is looking better than a BA
(eaglebeak)
Maybe they can try "Peace, Land, and Bread" next.
This week at Victoria’s Secret women’s panties are half off...
Grab your half of crotch.
Dear Nike;
For your next campaign, may I suggest "Work Makes You Free"?
Send the check to my agent.
Regards,
Peschel
P.S.: You may want to avoid using this in Germany.
“The Trail of Tears?”
Trail of Tears Park
Course Details
Course Type: Permanent
# Holes: 18
Target Type: DISCatcher
Tee Type: Concrete
Elevation: Flat
Foliage: Mixed - Trees/Open
Course Length: 8,585ft
Alternate Length: 6,435ft
Hole Length: Under 300ft: 0 | 300 - 400ft: 3 | Over 400ft: 15
Course Designer: HB Clark
Directions
I-169; exit 8 for US-41 toward Hopkinsville/Pembroke. Go north on US-41 for 0.7 mile to a right on Trail of Tears Dr.
"Work Makes You Free"?
Woke Macht Frei
So... shouldn't we be celebrating the fact that pretty much no one in America without a history PhD made this connection?
I disagree, Ann. Hiring history majors is clearly the Final Solution to infelicitous phrasing.
Kraft durch Freude would be more apt.
Any well educated person should be aware of the phrase and its usage. The idea that you would have to be a history major to get it is a sign of our fixation on college as a form of trade school where STEM majors are triumphant and English majors destined for baristaville.
Layer upon layer of Clown World comedy.
Incredible, the first time I agree with Olbermann--Fire Everybody!!
Traditional Guy said: "The so called Civil War was officially named the War of the Southern Rebellion."
So you're not going with the "War of Northern Aggression," which is what I was taught.
Maybe the history majors could learn to code.
They should just write books and become millionaires.
speaking of the last star wars film, good grief that looks like it could really wreak,
What army would fight a lost cause? A winner reinforces success and abandons failure. In general you don’t know at the beginning if the cause is lost, at the turning point to failure you immediately seek an optimal path to a stable position. That you must always fight for the lost cause is pretty stupid.
War of the Rebellion (not Southern Rebellion). I've come to prefer my own coinage: War About Between Among and Within the States (WABAWS, feel free to quote me).
Maybe I'm touchy today but there seems to be a lot of history major and liberal arts bashing around; what strikes me as more odd is the implication that somehow grave flaws in our Entertainment-Athletic Complex can be laid at the feet of these pesky humanists.
As a librarian-archivist-historian-historical activist (retired from low-paid work) all I can do is echo Monica: If.Fucking.Only.
Without looking, I'm going to guess that Olbermann is still the pompous ignoramus he used to be, one of that class of jocksniffing celebrity fanboys who mistake sarcasm for wit, and reductionism for logic.
Narr
Still no robots here. Is truth, comrade!
Sebastian said...
Our overlords know nothing.
Yet they claim the power to control our rights and our money and the climate.
**********
On top of that, they have the stupendous arrogance to believe that they, at long last, are morally and intellectually perfect. That they are The End of History itself, that all the unwoke generations before them were hopelessly defective in thought, spirit and action.
What bullshit.
As for climate: ask a SJW what gas makes up the largest percentage of our atmosphere.
You'll get "oxygen" every time.
@Pettifogger...The War of Northern Aggression label was a part of the Lost Cause propaganda writings.The War of the Southern rebellion is the official name in the United State's Army History of the years 1861 thru April, 1865.
I prefer to use the words of the winners and not the self pity preachers creating excuses to sound courageous for their crime of starting a War that they could never win. The heart of their excuses was that the British Army in Canada and the British Fleet ruling the seas betrayed them by not attacking Lincoln. That part was right.
Fen said...
While they are on the topic, one of the conditions of the treaty signed to end the Civil War was that the South be allowed to honor and memorialize it's heroes.
*************
IIRC there was no official treaty, because the North never recognized the South as a separate nation. The Appomattox surrender document makes no mention of memorializing Confederate heroes.
In fact, most such statues were first erected in the 1920's, when Jim Crow laws were enacted.
Wow, the Colin Kaepernick blowback must have really hurt Nike if they're now appealing to supporters of the American Confederacy.
No, I would not trust a history major to get this. Not now.
Nike or the Winged Victory of Samothrace is a celebration of successful militarism. She is depicting the feeling of returning from defeating an enemy. Like the night of the Glorious Election of 2016. Like hearing that Judge Hagedorn won.
"There's not to make reply, there's not to reason why, there's but to do and die, into the valley of death rode the snowflakes." Apparently, a college degree is now more than worthless, it's an actual hindrance.
There are blogs which the SJW's at Nike would consider white supremacists. Some have taken to calling blacks "nikers". Maybe Nike should abandon their trade name altogether, rather than be associated with such deplorables.
Mx. Chairman, the only way we can stop history from repeating itself all over our ass is to pony up and put a historian on the Board. You don’t even want to know what our liability is going to be like if one of our products causes a repetition of slavery or genocide or some other disastrous historical event, and the whole thing could have been avoided if only we had exercised enough due diligence to have someone qualified available to warn us. That was a damn close call for Nike, and it could just as easily have been us.
Very truly yours,
Legal
Fen, where are you to respond?....Fen...FEN??
Yes, there are many worthwhile last stands for lost causes. But this phrase is well known among southerners in both a sacred (true believers) and profane (as in "throw a (confederate) flag over her head and #&$% her for a Lost Cause) parlance.
However, the world is replete with people mouthing and writing things they should not. One that if heard and seen many times is "Dog and Pony Show". When I hear someone say it, I usually tell to stop using that phrase and explain the Dog and Pony Shows were something that used to be seen in places like Havana, Juarez and Tijuana. If they don't get it then, I explain further. White face usually ensues.
And remember Hitler made a difference.
GRW3 at 0820 says, "White face usually ensues," when he explains the origin of the phrase Dog and Pony Show (a new version of which is Canine-Equine Extravaganza). Of course, any word or phrase that enters wide usage (especially in English) will usually, and pretty quickly, lose any strong connection to its origin--'cept for us pedants. (See: Wuss > Wussy > u.s.w.)
Should I be offended by "White face"? Maybe White face/White Face/"White Face"/'"White Face'" can be made a Thing for people to get huffy about.
Narr
Can't recall what the sailors called the table-dancing B-girls around Subic who could pick up a dime with their [redacted].
Fen, where are you to respond?....Fen...FEN??
Sorry, was asleep. My understanding is it IS in the Appomattox doc. And yes, I wrongly used the word "treaty", my mistake. I'll research it and catch up with you in a newer thread, even if I come up empty.
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