Colin Kaepernick Ad Campaign

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Colin Kaepernick Ad Campaign
The name Nike means "goddess of victory. True to its name, Nike has been victorious, enjoying the spotlight as a global sports giant company that has dominated the sports industry. The company was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports but was later named Nike in 1971. Since then, the company has become a global leader in designing, developing, and manufacturing sportswear. The corporation owes its success to its great marketing strategies and successful ad campaigns. Nike launched their first successful campaign, ‘Just Do It', in 1988, which increased their sales from 877 million dollars to 9.2 billion dollars within a decade. Since then, the company has launched other campaigns, but none as controversial as the Colin Kaepernick Ad Campaign. The campaign saw many people taking to social media to voice their opinions on what they thought about Nike’s new campaign. Many people opposed the ad and openly condemned it. Despite the negative reactions on social media, the ad was a success, with Nike experiencing a 5% increase in its stock price shortly after it was released. Therefore, Nike took the risk of starting the campaign because it believed that its marketing strategy would work. 
In the days following the release of the Colin Kaepernick Ad Campaign, the company dominated the media for several months. Statistics show that they were mentioned on more than 1.5 million social media platforms, with people posting 4 million posts daily regarding Nike (Kantar). The posts resulted in Nike being mentioned seven more times, than they normally would. Naturally, most of the posts originated from the USA, but other countries also took to social media to voice their opinion on the ad. For instance, countries like the UK mentioned Nike five times more after the ad. While not all of the posts were positive, Instagram had the highest positive engagement, while Twitter had the highest negative engagement. Nike received both positive and negative attention as a result of increased social media engagement. 
Before the ad, Nike enjoyed a 48% positive engagement, a 48% neutral engagement, and a 5% negative engagement. After they released the ad, the company saw a 49% positive engagement, a 22% neutral engagement, and a 29% negative engagement. The positive engagement increased by 1%, with the neutral engagement significantly dropping, showing Nike had managed to touch a lot of neutral people with their campaign. Opponents fueled the fire on social media by uploading viral videos of people cutting out the Nike logo from their products or burning Nike pr...