His protest started back in 2016, and many labelled him unpatriotic, including Donald Trump, who called for team owners to fire players who protested in that way. The owners seemingly listened, with Kaepernick apparently blackballed from being signed to a team, even though it appears he could still be a good option for many teams.
Those who are upset have vowed to boycott Nike, stop buying its products, and have been taking to social media to show off their defaced Nike products. In many situations, this could be damaging for an organisation, with potential reputational damage and negative effects to sales. Having the President of the United States and his supporters against you is not something most businesses would want.
However, Nike didn't become a multi-billion dollar company for no reason. Before launching the campaign they would have done their research and analysis, and would have figured out that offending Donald Trump and others like him would be outweighed by the people they could attract. They decided that their audience who support Kaepernick are more significant for now than those who don't.
From a public relations point of view, this shows that sometimes its OK to do something one audience doesn't like, if it's something which your key audience will get behind. It's not always possible to please all audiences all the time.
This can also be an important lesson when dealing with crisis communications. Many companies, especially in this age of outrage where people are often forced to apologise for causing offence, might have apologised and changed the video or the campaign. Nike haven't done so, and have kept the campaign on track.
It seems to be paying off, with reports that Nike's online sales jumped 31% after they unveiled the campaign, and if nothing else, they got people talking about them. Take a look at the full video below.
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