Nike accused of going woke, broke
If it seems we’re writing about layoffs every other week, it’s because, well, we are! That’s the big news in corporate America at the moment and in the past week Nike was the latest protagonist in the ongoing saga. Nike announced in the last week that it would be laying off two percent of its workforce, amounting to more than 1,500 people.
This led some publishers, including Breitbart, to opine on the company suffering from its ‘woke’ ideals, and this was by far the most prevalent narrative about the layoffs. Watch out for this to become an even more common narrative this year, especially as we approach the election in the US.
Interestingly, this isn’t actually the biggest story about Nike this year. The brand received far more engagement (and 6x the media coverage) when Tiger Woods ended his 27-year relationship with the brand. One post on Instagram by ESPN on the news had almost half a million engagements. So while the layoffs may be getting all the attention right now, people were a lot more interested in Tiger Woods moving on than they are in the current business challenges. As always, it’s mostly a matter of perspective.
The Power of a Calvin Klein ad to get people talking
Pop culture icon + abs + New York City as a backdrop and Calvin Klein checks off yet another successful campaign, this time with BTS’s JungKook as the icon of focus.
It’s a classic approach for the brand, which had already seen its first viral moment of the year in early January when The Bear star Jeremy Allen White bared his body on a New York rooftop, resulting in an internet meltdown and hundreds of articles being published about the campaign.
But now, JungKook’s ad showing him dancing around Grand Central station (in a much less revealing ensemble than White) has received even more public attention, that is to the actual ad at least.
The chart above shows the public interest in articles about White and JungKook’s Calvin Klein ads, and while articles about White received more interest than what articles about JungKook have received so far, on TikTok it’s another story.
JungKook’s ad on the platform has earned 3.57 million engagements, which is over double the 1.7 million that White’s ad saw. On Instagram the two men can call it even, with both ads reaching upwards of 1.5 million engagements.
And while it’s not an actual competition of course, the virality of these ads also has an influence on brands you would never expect to enter the conversation — the most notable being Duolingo. The Duo owl posted a re-creation of White’s ad on its Instagram account, urging its users to love Duo like they love White. The post received 437k engagements, and surely a few giggles.
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1 年Not hard to believe that Breitbart attributed Nike layoffs to a 'woke' backlash but very difficult to believe that this is the prevalent narrative amongst respected news outlets. Is there more data you can share?