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Nike’s Black and Tan Fiasco: How the Luck of the Irish Saves Shoe Giant from PR Disaster

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Nike Black and Tan Fiasco

The Black and Tans were a royalist paramilitary group funded by the British government’s Irish police force in 1920 and 1921, when Ireland was in open revolt against colonial rule. In this Future of Engagement episode, host Murray Newlands examines how social media covered the Black and Tan fiasco, and how Nike mitigated the damage its brand received in Ireland:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxqJT8OI0eo]

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Click here to see the video if it doesn’t appear

Highlights

  • Nike was widely criticized by politicians, traditional media, and social media
  • Nike reacted to this by apologizing and admitting its mistake
  • The fiasco got a lot of coverage on Facebook by people sharing images about it

Graphs courtesy of Alerti social media monitoring and management

Alerti Black and Tan social media chart

Sign up for a free 3 month Alerti trial using the code alertivideo.

About

Murray Newlands is a successful social media consultant that runs the international marketing media agency Influence People, based in downtown San Francisco, and has a proven track record consistently delivering desired results to his clients.

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{ 11 Responses }

  1. Shelly Roberts says:
    Ha, that's brilliant topic, Murray Newlands! I'm impressed to know that impression about Nike’s Black and Tan Fiasco. It's really great way of advertisement. Thanks!
  2. David says:
    For every new launch there is an advertising and marketing campaign. The campaign consist of various strategies need for the success of the new launch and this is one of the technique, I guess. Any sort of advertising is good for the brand. I'm sure this is an plotted plan.
  3. Jupiter Jim says:
    Let me keep this real short. NIKE is NOT fooling me. They knew exactly what the Hell they were doing. They disgust me. Was it really necessary for a Multi-billion company to do something so offensive to generate a little extra publicity? Anyone who knows anything about Irish history knows what a disgrace this campaign is. Have they no Shame? -- Jupiter Jim
  4. Sara says:
    Despite the sales, you are right!They should have done a proper Google research before!Thanks for sharing.
  5. Emily says:
    Nike has a neck to neck competition with Adidas & reebok, so the launch has to be very impressive, They done this intentionally, such a big brand, very good advertising and marketing agencies would be handling the brand, they can't commit such a mistake. Now very soon everyone will start talking about this new model and ultimately this will be the hit.
  6. Aliosha says:
    Yes social media engagement is what really drives sales these days, love the video. Thanks for this great post Murray.
  7. Stephen Jeske says:
    Come on now. We're talking about a huge company with an equally huge budget that can afford to hire a lot of very competent people. I find it a little difficult to believe this was just an oversight on their part.
  8. neojit says:
    Thanks for this great post. As i can saw he got plenty of sales through the help of fanpages. This is really great.
  9. Dan Keller says:
    I saw references to this all over Twitter today and now I understand what this is all about. I do think this was intentional to create some buzz. It seems to be working. Nice shoes too!
  10. Bishwajeet says:
    Any marketing is a marketing for a company. Sometime negative publicity helps the company and I think this is also one of those times.
  11. Jeremy says:
    I dunno...to me this sounds suspicious. With the extremely intelligent people handling Nike's marketing, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they made this move just to generate the extra buzz. With all kinds of people using negative press to their own benefit, it would make sense that some brands are doing the same. Of course they are going to play dumb and pretend it was an ignorant mistake. Regardless of the true intentions, it got people talking about their brand and this product. If it weren't for this 'mix up', I'd personally know nothing about this shoe.