The Nike ad starring Colin Kaepernick does not appear to have adversely affected sales, an analyst said on Saturday.
According to Edison Trends, a digital commerce research company: “Nike sales grew 31% from Sunday through Tuesday over Labor Day this year, besting 2017’s comparative 17% increase.”
The sportswear giant released the first version of its ad on Monday, the Labor Day holiday. It featured the quarterback and the slogan: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Just do it.”
Kaepernick, 30, has been without a team since opting out of his San Francisco 49ers contract in March 2017. In 2016 he was an originator of protests by NFL players, targeting racial injustice and police brutality, which often involve kneeling during the pre-game playing of the national anthem.
Donald Trump has made the protests a key part of his appeal to his base, arguing that the players are disrespecting the anthem, the US flag and the military.
On Tuesday, the president told the rightwing website Daily Caller: “I think it’s a terrible message that [Nike] are sending and the purpose of them doing it, maybe there’s a reason for them doing it. But I think as far as sending a message, I think it’s a terrible message and a message that shouldn’t be sent. There’s no reason for it.”
He also said Nike paid him “a lot of rent” in New York and admitted that the protests and the Nike ad were “in another way … what this country is all about, that you have certain freedoms to do things that other people think you shouldn’t do”.
“But I personally am on a different side of it,” Trump said.
In the following days, the president pursued the issue via Twitter. On Wednesday, he wrote: “Just like the NFL, whose ratings have gone WAY DOWN, Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts. I wonder if they had any idea that it would be this way? As far as the NFL is concerned, I just find it hard to watch, and always will, until they stand for the FLAG!”
Trump did not supply evidence for his claim of “anger and boycotts” but opposition to the company’s move was expressed widely and in some instances creatively on social media.
On Friday, the morning after the full version of the Nike ad played during the Philadelphia Eagles v Atlanta Falcons NFL season opener, the president asked: “What was Nike thinking?”
Edison Trends’ analysis suggested the company will be thinking its gambit has worked, allowing it to surf familiar controversy and create a “Trump bump” all of its own.
“Nike’s 2018 late summer sales show much the same trend as last year’s,” the company wrote, “with order volume decreasing slightly going into late August. The similarity decreases coming out of Labor Day weekend, however, with sales seeing a bigger bump on Monday and Tuesday than in the past.”
Edison Trends said its analysis was based on “anonymised and aggregated e-receipts from more than 3 million consumers”.
The NFL has not resolved how to respond to or govern the protests, which were widely discussed again on Thursday after Eagles defensive end Michael Bennett sat down before the anthem had finished.
In July, in an open letter to league owners, the NBA great and Guardian sports columnist Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote: “It’s been two years since Colin Kaepernick first took a knee to protest systemic racial injustice, especially police brutality, against people of color.
“The worst thing about that isn’t that two years later we’re still debating whether players have the right to protest, it’s that not much has changed regarding what Kaepernick was protesting.”
