For global shoemaker Nike, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, and a suburban manufacturing plant offering 500 new jobs, timing made all the difference.
Instead of celebrating the Beaverton, Oregon based company’s plans to build a factory in the Phoenix suburb Goodyear, as Ducey expected to do Tuesday, the state’s Republican chief executive yanked Arizona’s economic incentives for the project and lambasted Nike for what he characterized as a snub of the American flag.
The day before, the apparel maker had scrapped a new athletic shoe featuring a version of the flag attributed to Revolutionary-era Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross on the advice of Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback whose protests during the national anthem cost him his NFL career. Kaepernick said he found the banner offensive because of its association with an era where slavery was widely practiced, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“American business should be proud of our country’s history, not abandoning it,” Ducey wrote on Twitter. “Arizona’s economy is doing just fine without Nike. We don’t need to suck up to companies that consciously denigrate our nation’s history.”
While Ducey was backed up by GOP leaders including Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, Nike’s actions may still boost its standing with younger and more liberal voters. Millennials, whose population of 92 million makes them the largest generation in U.S. history, are likely to be potential customers far longer than their older, more conservative predecessors, according to Eric Yaverbaum, who heads New York-based Ericho Communications and has 35 years of experience in marketing and public relations.
What the outcry will mean to the plant in Goodyear is less clear. The government of the city, which dates to a 1917 land purchase by Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., had approved a job-creation agreement on Monday that would provide a little more than $1 million in incentives for jobs at the $184.5 million plant.
Goodyear “has found itself in the middle of a difficult situation,” Mayor Georgia Lord said Tuesday, but it intends to honor the deal, which will create 500 jobs paying an average $48,514 – an annual salary 25% higher than the state’s median.
“It has been a focus of the Goodyear City Council to build a strong economy for years to come, and we will continue to work hard to bring the kind of high-quality jobs that our residents deserve,” Lord said.
For its part, Nike says the Goodyear investment demonstrates its commitment to the U.S., where it already employs 35,000 workers.
“Nike is a company proud of its American heritage and our continuing engagement supporting thousands of American athletes, including the U.S. Olympic team,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
The company said it routinely withdraws products for a variety of business reasons. In the case of the flag shoe, which was timed around Independence Day, Nike was concerned that it “could unintentionally offend and detract from the nation’s patriotic holiday.”
Cruz, a Texas Republican who lost his party’s presidential nomination to Donald Trump in 2016, said it’s Nike’s action that’s offensive. He plans to abandon his lifelong loyalty to Nike as a result.
“They’ve now decided their shoes represent snide disdain for the American flag,” he wrote. “Since they don’t want my business anymore, I won’t buy any more. Can anyone recommend a good sneaker that’s not so woke?”
Hawley, the former prosecutor who defeated Democrat Claire McCaskill in a race for one of Missouri’s Senate seats, said Nike has “become a symbol of everything wrong with the corporate economy,” and urged the company to “apologize to Americans for denigrating the flag.”
Nike, however, has a history of taking risks with the athletes who endorse its products. A 2013 campaign with Tiger Woods, who was then rebounding after a 2010 divorce from Swedish model Elin Nordegren and intense media coverage of extramarital affairs, used the slogan, “Winning takes care of everything.”
And in 2018, when the French Open banned catsuits like the Nike garment worn by tennis star Serena Williams in May, the company responded with a Twitter post. “You can take the superhero out of her costume, but you can never take away her superpowers,” the company said, a reference to Williams’ statement that wearing the suit made her feel like a superhero.
In the 12 months through May, the company’s most recent fiscal year, such campaigns helped drive sales 7% higher to $39.1 billion. Google searches for the words Nike and “Just Do It” more than doubled in the period, CEO Mark Parker said Thursday.
“We broke through with a number of ‘Just Do It’ campaigns that celebrated our athletes’ dreams,” he said. “2019 was a year in which the Nike brand rose above and connected emotionally with consumers on another level.”
