Has Nike Lost Its Mind?
ARS Technica is reporting that Nike found comments made by an anonymous poster on the Yahoo Message boards so egregious the company has allegedly asked the Chinese Government to track down the source.
The story begins when Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang (a Nike-sponsored athlete) pulled out of preliminary heats in the Olympics claiming he’d suffered an injury. Nike found a silver lining in this by running the usual ‘love Sport even when it breaks your heart’ ad campaign featuring Xiang. Then some internet rumor-mongerer posted a bit claiming he had inside information that Nike asked Xiang to withdraw because he had no chance to win, and the injury story would allow Nike to continue running successful Ad campaigns.
The mature official response, presumably, would be to ignore nonsense posted in a chat room. But instead Nike turned to “the relevant Government departments” to identify the source of the posting.
China is well known to be one of the world’s most aggressive monitors of internet usage, heavily restricting what pages Chinese citizens are allowed to see, and diligently tracking their every online move. That Nike would turn to such a notorious government and ask them to use methods illegal in the USA to round up one measly internet lone wolf is surely one of the biggest potential PR blunders in the company’s history.
How does this fit with Nike’s painstakingly-crafted corporate image of individual freedom and expression? It doesn’t. Says ARS Technica, “Nike to China on fingering anonymous blogger: Just Do it.”
More info on this story at Cnet
