The Emmys picked the wrong commercial to celebrate.
This week, Nike scored big with its Colin Kaepernick partnership, raking in an Emmy award for its “Dream Crazy” ad featuring the former quarterback. In the two-minute commercial, Kaepernick describes the real stories of athletes with “crazy” dreams. “Don’t settle for homecoming queen or linebacker,” he says. “Do both.”
“Lose 120 pounds and become an iron man after beating a brain tumor,” he continues. “If you’re born a refugee, don’t let it stop you from playing soccer for the national team at age 16.” The commercial teems with players who have overcome adversity, including, supposedly, Kaepernick himself. “Believe in something,” he says as he turns to face the camera. “Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
When the ad first came out last year, some NFL fans talked of boycotting Nike; many of them condemned Kaepernick for taking a knee during the national anthem when he was a player for the the San Francisco 49ers. But the controversy surrounding Kaepernick’s contentious protest of police violence isn’t the reason the Emmys should not have awarded the ad. The real issue is that there was a much more powerful contender.
With “Point of View,” Sandy Hook Promise created a impressive ad from the perspective of a school shooter. The viewer watches through the eyes of a student who enters the halls of a school, observing other students in various situations before setting down a duffel bag and pulling out a gun.
“Most people only notice a shooter once it’s too late,” a screen reads at the end. “See the signs and stop a shooting before it happens.”
Founded “by several family members whose loved ones were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012,” Sandy Hook Promise is a nonprofit organization that advocates primarily for addressing the culture, not the politics, around school shootings. For example, the organization provides materials so educators can learn the signs that point to potential shooters.
In less than two minutes, Sandy Hook Promise’s ad walks viewers through countless warning signs: the shooter keeps violent materials in a school locker, appears to have published an ominous Facebook post, and sits alone in the lunch room. He’s pushed, yelled at, or ignored as he goes about his day. By walking the viewer through the shooter’s perspective, the ad demonstrates exactly how warning signs can proliferate while remaining completely invisible to those who aren’t looking.
The Emmy-nominated ad is timely, powerful, and, unlike the Kaepernick spot, not haphazard with its social justice message. Perhaps it suffered for not concluding with a call for gun control, which would have fit a more politically correct narrative. Either way, it didn’t get the accolades it deserved.
So if you want to watch the best advertising from last year, check out the compelling clip from a nonprofit group, not the pandering from Nike.
