Why Apologize in Text when a GIF Will Do? · 179 words posted 06/28/2005 03:26 PM
Nike recently stole, uh, “remixed” a Minor Threat poster as inspiration for a new ad campaign (read about it on kottke). After the theft—uh, creative sampling—was discovered Nike issued an apology. Curiously, the apology is posted as a gif instead of plain text, meaning that while Nike’s contrition might be sincere it won’t become discoverable via google. What the heck, let’s help them out:
Nike Skateboarding sincerely apologizes for the creation of a tour poster inspired by Minor Threat’s album cover. Despite rumors being circulated, Wieden & Kennedy and Odopod had nothing to do with the creation of this tour poster and shold not be held accountable. To set the record straight, Nike Skateboarding’s “Major Threat” Tour poster was designed, executed and promoted by skateboarders, for skateboarders. All of the Nike employees responsible for the creation of the tour flyer are fans of both Minor Thread and Dischord records and have nothing but respect for both.
More text follows, the gist of which is “We’re sorry dude.” But not so sorry as to, you know, say it in plain text.
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3. On Jul 1, 07:11 AM Francis said:
I agree with k.klein. It has nothing to do with indexing or search engines. It’s not a cover-up. It’s not important enough for there to be a cover-up when legally, the apology is all they need.
Don’t forget, this likely wasn’t done by a group of marketing execs sitting around a million-dollar conference table, gleefully tenting their fingers like Mr Burns form the Simpsons. And the Nike Coverup Team is probably too busy worrying their sweatshops in Asia to spend much time on this.
It will have been some young designer who REALLY likes Minor Threat, and probably thought this would be cool. He doesn’t think about copyright, or corporate reliability. He just works there. His Manager, who himself is probably just a low-level manager in charge of one aspect of the project, probably approved the poster, perhaps never even having HEARD of Minor Threat. And so, a relatively simple misunderstanding turns into The Evil Corporate Machine, you see?
Also, the apology letter will have been drafted by a secretary somewhere within Nike Skateboarding. He or She will have given it to their boss, who will have perused it, said: “That’s covers all the bases legally”, and given it to our Project Manager (see above), who will have passed it to our designer or a developer, saying: “Put this on the site”.
The Designer of course, won’t use HTML, you’re right, as the entire site is in Flash. I’m sure they have ALL heard of (and perhaps even used) HTML and CSS though. It’s just not what is in the req. spec. for THIS site, so they don’t use it. I think that’s all. Actually when you think about the REAL reasons behind a lot of ‘scandals’ such as this, they’re pretty boring. #
4. On Jul 8, 03:59 PM randfish said:
This is actually a relatively ingenius tactic. I’ve never heard of using this type of system to avoid being indexed, but I can see how many, many firms might find this valuable.
I’m not convinced of what their motivation for doing this was, but the result is certainly worthwile. #
1. On Jun 30, 04:39 PM k.klein said:
i think they didn’t put up a plain text version because nobody working on the nike skateboarding site knows html, much less css.
http://www.nike.com/nikeskateboarding/v2/main.html
it’s all flash. all popup windows are composite gifs. also, i don’t think the designers have anything outside of flash pixel fonts.
so i don’t think it was anything of dastardly intention on nike’s part. more of a workflow thing. #