Part 2 (1/2)

Fast forward to 1998. The Gap launches its breakthrough Khakis Swing ads: a simple, exuberant miniature music video set to ”Jump, Jive 'n' Wail”-and a great video at that. The question of whether these ads were ”coopting” the artistic integrity of the music was entirely meaningless. The Gap's commercials didn't capitalize on the retro swing revival-a solid argument can be made that they caused caused the swing revival. A few months later, when singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright appeared in a Christmas-themed Gap ad, his sales soared, so much so that his record company began promoting him as ”the guy in the Gap ads.” Macy Gray, the new R&B ”It Girl,” also got her big break in a Baby Gap ad. And rather than the Gap Khaki ads looking like rip-offs of MTV videos, it seemed that overnight, every video on MTV-from Brandy to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys-looked like a Gap ad; the company has pioneered its own aesthetic, which spilled out into music, other advertis.e.m.e.nts, even films like the swing revival. A few months later, when singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright appeared in a Christmas-themed Gap ad, his sales soared, so much so that his record company began promoting him as ”the guy in the Gap ads.” Macy Gray, the new R&B ”It Girl,” also got her big break in a Baby Gap ad. And rather than the Gap Khaki ads looking like rip-offs of MTV videos, it seemed that overnight, every video on MTV-from Brandy to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys-looked like a Gap ad; the company has pioneered its own aesthetic, which spilled out into music, other advertis.e.m.e.nts, even films like The Matrix The Matrix. After five years of intense lifestyle branding, the Gap, it has become clear, is as much in the culture-creation business as the artists in its ads.

For their part, many artists now treat companies like the Gap less as deep-pocketed pariahs trying to feed off their cachet than as just another medium they can exploit in order to promote their own brands, alongside radio, video and magazines. ”We have to be everywhere. We can't afford to be too precious in our marketing,” explains Ron Shapiro, executive vice president of Atlantic Records. Besides, a major ad campaign from Nike or the Gap penetrates more nooks and crannies of the culture than a video in heavy rotation on MTV or a cover article in Rolling Stone Rolling Stone. Which is why piggybacking on these campaign blitzes-Fat Boy Slim in Nike ads, Brandy in Cover Girl commercials, Lil' Kim rapping for Candies-has become, Business Week Business Week announced with much glee, ”today's top 40 radio.” announced with much glee, ”today's top 40 radio.”13 Of course the branding of music is not a story of innocence lost. Musicians have been singing ad jingles and signing sponsors.h.i.+p deals since radio's early days, as well as having their songs played on commercial radio stations and signing deals with multinational record companies. Throughout the eighties-music's decade of the straight-up s.h.i.+ll-rock stars like Eric Clapton sang in beer ads, and the pop stars, appropriately enough, crooned for pop: George Michael, Robert Plant, Whitney Houston, Run-DMC, Madonna, Robert Palmer, David Bowie, Tina Turner, Lionel Richie and Ray Charles all did Pepsi or c.o.ke ads, while sixties anthems like the Beatles' ”Revolution” became background music for Nike commercials.

During this same period, the Rolling Stones made music history by ushering in the era of the sponsored rock tour-and fittingly, sixteen years later, it is still the Stones who are leading the charge into the latest innovation in corporate rock: the band as brand extension. In 1981, Jovan-a distinctly un-rock-and-roll perfume company-sponsored a Rolling Stones stadium tour, the first arrangement of its kind, though tame by today's standards. Though the company got its logos on a few ads and banners, there was a clear distinction between the band that had chosen to ”sell out” and the corporation that had paid a huge sum to a.s.sociate itself with the inherent rebelliousness of rock. This subordinate status might have been fine for a company out merely to move products, but when designer Tommy Hilfiger decided that the energy of rock and rap would become his ”brand essence,” he was looking for an integrated experience, one more in tune with his own transcendent ident.i.ty quest. The results were evident in the Stones' Tommy-sponsored Bridges to Babylon tour in 1997. Not only did Hilfiger have a contract to clothe Mick Jagger, he also had the same arrangement with the Stones' opening act, Sheryl Crow-on stage, both modeled items from Tommy's newly launched ”Rock 'n' Roll Collection.”

It wasn't until January 1999, however-when Hilfiger launched the ad campaign for the Stones' No Security Tour-that full brand-culture integration was achieved. In the ads, young, glowing Tommy models were pictured in full-page frame ”watching” a Rolling Stones concert taking place on the opposite page. The photographs of the band members were a quarter of the size of those of the models. In some of the ads, the Stones were nowhere to be found and the Tommy models alone were seen posing with their own guitars. In all cases, the ads featured a hybrid logo of the Stones' famous red tongue over Tommy's trademarked red-white-and-blue flag. The tagline was ”Tommy Hilfiger Presents the Rolling Stones No Security Tour”-though there were no dates or locations for any tour stops, only the addresses of flags.h.i.+p Tommy stores.

In other words, this wasn't rock sponsors.h.i.+p, it was ”live-action advertising,” as media consultant Michael J. Wolf describes the ads.14 It's clear from the campaign's design that Hilfiger isn't interested in buying a piece of someone else's act, even if they are the Rolling Stones. The act is a background set, powerfully showcasing the true rock-and-roll essence of the Tommy brand; just one piece of Hilfiger's larger project of carving out a place in the music world, not as a sponsor but as a player-much as Nike has achieved in the sports world. It's clear from the campaign's design that Hilfiger isn't interested in buying a piece of someone else's act, even if they are the Rolling Stones. The act is a background set, powerfully showcasing the true rock-and-roll essence of the Tommy brand; just one piece of Hilfiger's larger project of carving out a place in the music world, not as a sponsor but as a player-much as Nike has achieved in the sports world.

The Hilfiger/Stones branding is only the highest-profile example of the new relations.h.i.+p between bands and sponsors that is sweeping the music industry. For instance, it was a short step for Volkswagen-after using cutting-edge electronic music in its ads for the new Beetle-to launch DriversFest '99, a VW branded music festival in Long Island, New York. DriversFest competes for ticket sales with the Mentos Freshmaker Tour, a two-year-old traveling music festival owned and branded by a breath-mint manufacturer-on the Mentos Web site, visitors are invited to vote for which bands they want to play the venue. As with the Absolut Kelly Web site and the Altoids' Curiously Strong art exhibition, these are not sponsored events: the brand is the event's infrastructure; the artists are its filler, a reversal in the power dynamic that makes any discussion of the need to protect unmarketed artistic s.p.a.ce appear hopelessly naive.

This emerging dynamic is clearest in the branded festivals being developed by the large beer companies. Instead of merely playing in beer ads, as they likely would have in the eighties, acts like Hole, Soundgarden, David Bowie and the Chemical Brothers now play beer-company gigs. Molson Breweries, which owns 50 percent of Canada's only national concert promoter, Universal Concerts, already has its name promoted almost every time a rock or pop star gets up on stage in Canada-either through its Molson Canadian Rocks promotional arm or its myriad venues: Molson Stage, Molson Park, Molson Amphitheatre. For the first decade or so, this was a fine arrangement, but by the mid-nineties, Molson was tired of being upstaged. Rock stars had an annoying tendency to hog the spotlight and, worse, sometimes they even insulted their sponsors from the stage.

Clearly fed up, in 1996 Molson held its first Blind Date Concert. The concept, which has since been exported to the U.S. by sister company Miller Beer, is simple: hold a contest in which winners get to attend an exclusive concert staged by Molson and Miller in a small club-much smaller than the venues where one would otherwise see these megastars. And here's the clincher: keep the name of the band secret until it steps on stage. Antic.i.p.ation mounts about the concert (helped along by national ad campaigns building up said antic.i.p.ation), but the name on everyone's lips isn't David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Soundgarden, INXS or any of the other bands that have played the Dates, it's Molson and Miller. No one, after all, knows who is going to play, but they know who is putting on the show. With Blind Date, Molson and Miller invented a way to equate their brands with extremely popular musicians, while still maintaining their compet.i.tive edge over the stars. ”In a funny way,” says Universal Concerts' Steve Herman, ”the beer is bigger than the band.”15 The rock stars, turned into high-priced hired guns at Molson's bar mitzvah party, continued to find sad little ways to rebel. Almost every musician who played a Blind Date acted out: Courtney Love told a reporter, ”G.o.d bless Molson.... I douche with it.”16 The s.e.x Pistols' Johnny Lydon screamed ”Thank you for the money” from the stage, and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell told the crowd, ”Yeah, we're here because of some f.u.c.king beer company...Labatt's.” But the tantrums were all incidental to the main event, in which Molson and Miller were the real rock stars and it didn't really matter how those petulant rent-a-bands behaved. The s.e.x Pistols' Johnny Lydon screamed ”Thank you for the money” from the stage, and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell told the crowd, ”Yeah, we're here because of some f.u.c.king beer company...Labatt's.” But the tantrums were all incidental to the main event, in which Molson and Miller were the real rock stars and it didn't really matter how those petulant rent-a-bands behaved.

Jack Rooney, Miller's vice president of marketing, explains that his $200 million promotion budget goes toward devising creative new ways to distinguish the Miller brand from the plethora of other brands in the marketplace. ”We're competing not just against Coors and Corona,” he says, ”but c.o.ke, Nike and Microsoft.”17 Only he isn't telling the whole story. In Only he isn't telling the whole story. In Advertising Age's Advertising Age's annual ”Top Marketing 100” list of 1997's best brands there was a new arrival: the Spice Girls (fittingly enough, since Posh Spice did once tell a reporter, ”We wanted to be a 'household name'. Like Ajax.” annual ”Top Marketing 100” list of 1997's best brands there was a new arrival: the Spice Girls (fittingly enough, since Posh Spice did once tell a reporter, ”We wanted to be a 'household name'. Like Ajax.”18) And the Spice Girls ranked number six in Forbes Forbes magazine's inaugural ”Celebrity Power 100,” in May 1999, a new ranking based not on fame or fortune but on stars' brand ”franchise.” The list was a watershed moment in corporate history, marking the fact that, as Michael J. Wolf says, ”Brands and stars have become the same thing.” magazine's inaugural ”Celebrity Power 100,” in May 1999, a new ranking based not on fame or fortune but on stars' brand ”franchise.” The list was a watershed moment in corporate history, marking the fact that, as Michael J. Wolf says, ”Brands and stars have become the same thing.”19 But when brands and stars are the same thing, they are also, at times, compet.i.tors in the high-stakes tussle for brand awareness, a fact more consumer companies have become ready to admit. Canadian clothing company Club Monaco, for instance, has never used celebrities in its campaigns. ”We've thought about it,” says vice president Christine Ralphs, ”but whenever we go there, it always becomes more about the personality than the brand, and for us, we're just not willing to share that.”20 There is good reason to be protective: though more and more clothing and candy companies seem intent on turning musicians into their opening acts, bands and their record labels are launching their own challenges to this demoted status. After seeing the enormous profits that the Gap and Tommy Hilfiger have made through their a.s.sociation with the music world, record labels are barreling into the branding business themselves. Not only are they placing highly sophisticated cross-branding apparatus behind working musicians, but bands are increasingly being conceived-and test-marketed-as brands first: the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys, N' Sync, All Saints and so on. Prefab bands aren't new to the music industry, and neither are bands with their own merchandising lines, but the phenomenon has never dominated pop culture as it has at the end of the nineties, and musicians have never before competed so aggressively with consumer brands. Sean ”Puffy” Combs has leveraged his celebrity as a rapper and record producer into a magazine, several restaurants, a clothing label and a line of frozen foods. And Raekwon, of the rap group Wu-Tang Clan, explains that ”the music, movies, the clothing, it is all part of the pie we're making. In the year 2005 we might have Wu-Tang furniture for sale at Nordstrom.”21 Whether it's the Gap or Wu-Tang Clan, the only remaining relevant question in the sponsors.h.i.+p debate seems to be, Where do you have the guts to draw the borders around your brand? Whether it's the Gap or Wu-Tang Clan, the only remaining relevant question in the sponsors.h.i.+p debate seems to be, Where do you have the guts to draw the borders around your brand?

Nike and the Branding of Sports Inevitably, any discussion about branded celebrity leads to the same place: Michael Jordan, the man who occupies the number-one spot on all of those ranking lists, who has incorporated himself into the JORDAN brand, whose agent coined the term ”superbrand” to describe him. But no discussion of Michael Jordan's brand potential can begin without the brand that branded him: Nike.

Nike has successfully upstaged sports on a scale that makes the breweries' rock-star aspirations look like amateur night. Now of course pro sports, like big-label music, is in essence a profit-driven enterprise, which is why the Nike story has less to teach us about the loss of unmarketed s.p.a.ce-s.p.a.ce that, arguably, never even existed in this context-than it does about the mechanics of branding and its powers of eclipse. A company that swallows cultural s.p.a.ce in giant gulps, Nike is the definitive story of the transcendent nineties superbrand, and more than any other single company, its actions demonstrate how branding seeks to erase all boundaries between the sponsor and the sponsored. This is a shoe company that is determined to unseat pro sports, the Olympics and even star athletes, to become the very definition of sports itself.

Nike CEO Phil Knight started selling running shoes in the sixties, but he didn't strike it rich until high-tech sneakers became the must-have accessory of America's jogging craze. But when jogging subsided in the mid-eighties and Reebok cornered the market on trendy aerobics shoes, Nike was left with a product destined for the great dustbin of yuppie fads. Rather than simply switching to a different kind of sneaker, Knight decided that running shoes should become peripheral in a reincarnated Nike. Leave sneakers to Reebok and Adidas-Nike would transform itself into what Knight calls ”the world's best sports and fitness company.”22 The corporate mythology has it that Nike is a sports and fitness company because it was built by a bunch of jocks who loved sports and were fanatically devoted to the wors.h.i.+p of superior athletes. In reality, Nike's project was a little more complicated and can be separated into three guiding principles. First, turn a select group of athletes into Hollywood-style superstars who are a.s.sociated not with their teams or even, at times, with their sport, but instead with certain pure ideas about athleticism as transcendence and perseverance-embodiments of the Graeco-Roman ideal of the perfect male form. Second, pit Nike's ”Pure Sports” and its team of athletic superstars against the rule-obsessed established sporting world. Third, and most important, brand like mad.

Step 1: Create Sport Celebrities It was Michael Jordan's extraordinary basketball skill that catapulted Nike to branded heaven, but it was Nike's commercials that made Jordan a global superstar. It's true that gifted athletes like Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali were celebrities before Nike's time, but they never reached Jordan's otherworldly level of fame. That stratum was reserved for movie and pop stars, who had been transformed by the special effects, art direction and careful cinematography of films and music videos. Sport stars pre-Nike, no matter how talented or wors.h.i.+ped, were still stuck on the ground. Football, hockey and baseball may have been ubiquitous on television, but televised sports were just real-time play-by-plays, which were often tedious, sometimes exciting and high tech only in the slow-mo replay. As for athletes endorsing products, their advertis.e.m.e.nts and commercials couldn't quite be described as cutting-edge star creation-whether it was Wilt Chamberlain goofily grinning from a box of Wheaties or Rocket Richard being sentenced to ”two minutes for looking so good” in Grecian Formula commercials.

I wake up every morning, jump in the shower, look down at the symbol, and that pumps me up for the day. It's to remind me every day what I have to do, which is, ”Just Do It.”-Twenty-four-year-old Internet entrepreneur Carmine Collettion on his decision to get a Nike swoosh tattooed on his navel, December 1997 Nike's 1985 TV spots for Michael Jordan brought sports into the entertainment world: the freeze frame, the close-up and the quick cuts that allowed Jordan to appear to be suspended in mid-jump, providing the stunning illusion that he could actually take flight. The idea of harnessing sport-shoe technology to create a superior being-of Michael Jordan flying through the air in suspended animation-was Nike mythmaking at work. These commercials were the first rock videos about sports and they created something entirely new. As Michael Jordan says, ”What Phil [Knight] and Nike have done is turn me into a dream.”23 Many of Nike's most famous TV commercials have used Nike superstars to convey the idea idea of sports, as opposed to simply representing the best of the athlete's own team sport. Spots often feature famous athletes playing a game other than the one they play professionally, such as tennis pro Andre Aga.s.si showing off his version of ”rock-and-roll golf.” And then there was the breakthrough ”Bo Knows” campaign, which lifted baseball and football player Bo Jackson out of his two professional sports and presented him instead as the perfect all-around cross-trainer. A series of quick-cut interviews with Nike stars-McEnroe, Jordan, Gretzky-ironically suggested that Jackson knew their sports better than they did. ”Bo knows tennis,” ”Bo knows basketball” and so on. of sports, as opposed to simply representing the best of the athlete's own team sport. Spots often feature famous athletes playing a game other than the one they play professionally, such as tennis pro Andre Aga.s.si showing off his version of ”rock-and-roll golf.” And then there was the breakthrough ”Bo Knows” campaign, which lifted baseball and football player Bo Jackson out of his two professional sports and presented him instead as the perfect all-around cross-trainer. A series of quick-cut interviews with Nike stars-McEnroe, Jordan, Gretzky-ironically suggested that Jackson knew their sports better than they did. ”Bo knows tennis,” ”Bo knows basketball” and so on.

At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Nike took this strategy out of the controlled environment of its TV commercials and applied it to a real sports compet.i.tion. The experiment started in 1995 when Nike's marketing department dreamed up the idea of turning a couple of Kenyan runners into Africa's first Olympic ski team. As Mark Bossardet, Nike's director of global athletics, explained, ”We were sitting around the office one day and we said, 'What if we took Kenyan runners and transferred their skills to cross-country skiing?'”24 Kenyan runners, who have dominated cross-country track-and-field compet.i.tions at the Olympics since 1968, have always represented the ”idea of sports” at Nike headquarters. (”Where's the Kenyans running?” Phil Knight has been heard to demand after viewing a Nike ad deemed insufficiently inspiring and heroic. In Nike shorthand it means, ”Where's the Spirit of Sports?”). Kenyan runners, who have dominated cross-country track-and-field compet.i.tions at the Olympics since 1968, have always represented the ”idea of sports” at Nike headquarters. (”Where's the Kenyans running?” Phil Knight has been heard to demand after viewing a Nike ad deemed insufficiently inspiring and heroic. In Nike shorthand it means, ”Where's the Spirit of Sports?”).25 So according to Nike marketing logic, if two Kenyan runners-living specimens of sports incarnate-were plucked out of their own sport and out of their country and their native climate, and dumped on a frozen mountaintop, and if they were then able to transfer their agility, strength and endurance to cross-country skiing, their success would represent a moment of pure sporting transcendence. It would be a spiritual transformation of Man over nature, birthright, nation and petty sports bureaucrats-brought to the world by Nike, of course. ”Nike always felt sports shouldn't have boundaries,” the swooshed press release announced. Finally there would be proof. So according to Nike marketing logic, if two Kenyan runners-living specimens of sports incarnate-were plucked out of their own sport and out of their country and their native climate, and dumped on a frozen mountaintop, and if they were then able to transfer their agility, strength and endurance to cross-country skiing, their success would represent a moment of pure sporting transcendence. It would be a spiritual transformation of Man over nature, birthright, nation and petty sports bureaucrats-brought to the world by Nike, of course. ”Nike always felt sports shouldn't have boundaries,” the swooshed press release announced. Finally there would be proof.

And if nothing else, Nike would get its name in lots of quirky human-interest sidebar stories-just like the wacky Jamaican bobsled team that hogged the headlines at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. What sports reporter could resist the heart-warmer of Africa's first ski team?

Nike found its test-tube subjects in two mid-level runners, Philip Boit and Henry Bitok. Since Kenya has no snow, no ski federation and no training facilities, Nike financed the entire extravagant affair, dis.h.i.+ng out $250,000 for training in Finland and custom-designed uniforms, and paying the runners a salary to live away from their families. When Nagano rolled around, Bitok didn't qualify and Boit finished last-a full twenty minutes after the goldmedal winner, Bjorn Daehlie of Norway. It turns out that cross-country running and cross-country skiing-despite the similarity of their names-require entirely different sets of skills and use different muscles.

But that was beside the point. Before the race began, Nike held a press conference at its Olympic headquarters, catered the event with Kenyan food and beer and showed reporters a video of the Kenyans encountering snow for the first time, skiing into bushes and falling on their b.u.t.ts. The journalists also heard accounts of how the climate change was so dramatic that the Kenyans' skin cracked and their fingernails and toenails fell off, but ”now,” as Boit said, ”I love snow. Without snow, I could not do my sport.” As the Tampa Tribune Tampa Tribune of February 12, 1998, put it, ”They're just two kooky Kenyans trying to make it in the frozen tundra.” of February 12, 1998, put it, ”They're just two kooky Kenyans trying to make it in the frozen tundra.”

It was quintessential Nike branding: by equating the company with athletes and athleticism at such a primal level, Nike ceased merely to clothe the game and started to play it. And once Nike was in the game with its athletes, it could have fanatical sports fans instead of customers.

Step 2: Destroy the Compet.i.tion Like any compet.i.tive sports player, Nike has its work cut out for it: winning. But winning for Nike is about much more than sneaker wars. Of course Nike can't stand Adidas, Fila and Reebok, but more important, Phil Knight has sparred with sports agents, whose individual greed, he claims, puts them ”inherently in conflict with the interests of athletes at every turn”26 the NBA, which he feels has unfairly piggybacked on Nike's star-creation machinery; the NBA, which he feels has unfairly piggybacked on Nike's star-creation machinery;27 and the International Olympic Committee, whose elitism and corruption Knight derided long before the organization's 1999 bribery scandals. and the International Olympic Committee, whose elitism and corruption Knight derided long before the organization's 1999 bribery scandals.28 In Nike's world, all of the official sports clubs, a.s.sociations and committees are actually trampling the spirit of sports-a spirit Nike alone truly embodies and appreciates. In Nike's world, all of the official sports clubs, a.s.sociations and committees are actually trampling the spirit of sports-a spirit Nike alone truly embodies and appreciates.

So at the same time as Nike's myth machine was fabricating the idea of Team Nike, Nike's corporate team was dreaming up ways to play a more central role in pro sports. First Nike tried to unseat the sports agents by starting an agency of its own, not only to represent athletes in contract negotiation but also to develop integrated marketing strategies for its clients that are sure to complement-not dilute-Nike's own branding strategy, often by pus.h.i.+ng its own ad concepts on other companies.

Then there was a failed attempt to create-and own-a college football version of the Super Bowl (the Nike Bowl), and in 1992, Nike did buy the Ben Hogan golf tour and rename it the Nike Tour. ”We do these things to be in the sport. We're in sports-that's what we do,” Knight told reporters at the time.29 That is certainly what they did when Nike and rival Adidas made up their own sporting event to settle a grudge match over who could claim the t.i.tle ”fastest man alive” in their ads: Nike's Michael Johnson or Adidas's Donovan Bailey. Because the two compete in different categories (Bailey in the 100-meter, Johnson in the 200), the sneaker brands agreed to split the difference and had the men compete in a made-up 150-meter race. Adidas won. That is certainly what they did when Nike and rival Adidas made up their own sporting event to settle a grudge match over who could claim the t.i.tle ”fastest man alive” in their ads: Nike's Michael Johnson or Adidas's Donovan Bailey. Because the two compete in different categories (Bailey in the 100-meter, Johnson in the 200), the sneaker brands agreed to split the difference and had the men compete in a made-up 150-meter race. Adidas won.

When Phil Knight faces the inevitable criticism from sports purists that he is having an undue influence on the games he sponsors, his stock response is that ”the athlete remains our reason for being.”30 But as the company's encounter with star basketball player Shaquille O'Neal shows, Nike is only devoted to a certain kind of athlete. Company biographer Donald Katz describes the tense meeting between O'Neal's manager, Leonard Armato, and Nike's marketing team: But as the company's encounter with star basketball player Shaquille O'Neal shows, Nike is only devoted to a certain kind of athlete. Company biographer Donald Katz describes the tense meeting between O'Neal's manager, Leonard Armato, and Nike's marketing team: Shaq had observed the explosion of the sports-marketing scene (”He took sports-marketing courses,” Armato says) and the rise of Michael Jordan, and he'd decided that rather than becoming a part of several varied corporate marketing strategies, an array of companies might be a.s.sembled as part of a brand presence that was he. Consumer products companies would become part of Team Shaq, rather than the other way around. ”We're looking for consistency of image,” Armato would say as he began collecting the team on Shaq's behalf. ”Like Mickey Mouse.”

The only problem was that at Nike headquarters, there is no Team Shaq, only Team Nike. Nike took a pa.s.s and handed over the player many thought would be the next Michael Jordan to Reebok-not ”Nike material,” they said. According to Katz, Knight's mission ”from the beginning had been to build a pedestal for sports such as the world had never seen.”31 But at Nike Town in Manhattan, the pedestal is not holding up Michael Jordan, or the sport of basketball, but a rotating Nike sneaker. Like a prima donna, it sits in the spotlight, the first celebrity shoe. But at Nike Town in Manhattan, the pedestal is not holding up Michael Jordan, or the sport of basketball, but a rotating Nike sneaker. Like a prima donna, it sits in the spotlight, the first celebrity shoe.

Step 3: Sell Pieces of the Brand As If It Was the Berlin Wall Nothing embodies the era of the brand like Nike Town, the company's chain of flags.h.i.+p retail outlets. Each one is a shrine, a place set apart for the faithful, a mausoleum. The Manhattan Nike Town on East Fifty-seventh Street is more than a fancy store fitted with the requisite brushed chrome and blond wood, it is a temple, where the swoosh is wors.h.i.+ped as both art and heroic symbol. The swoosh is equated with Sports at every turn: in reverent gla.s.s display cases depicting ”The definition of an athlete” in the inspirational quotes about ”Courage,” ”Honor,” ”Victory” and ”Teamwork” inlaid in the floorboards; and in the building's dedication ”to all athletes and their dreams.”

I asked a salesperson if there was anything amid the thousands of T-s.h.i.+rts, bathing suits, sports bras or socks that did not have a Nike logo on the outside of the garment. He racked his brain. T-s.h.i.+rts, no. Shoes, no. Track suits? No.

”Why?” he finally asked, sounding a bit hurt. ”Is somebody allergic to the swoosh?”

Nike, king of the superbrands, is like an inflated Pac-Man, so driven to consume it does so not out of malice but out of jaw-clenching reflex. It is ravenous by nature. It seems fitting that Nike's branding strategy involves an icon that looks like a check mark. Nike is checking off the s.p.a.ces as it swallows them: superstores? Check. Hockey? Baseball? Soccer? Check. Check. Check. T-s.h.i.+rts? Check. Hats? Check. Underwear? Check. Schools? Bathrooms? Shaved into brush cuts? Check. Check. Check. Since Nike has been the leader in branding clothing, it's not surprising that it has also led the way to the brand's final frontier: the branding of flesh. Not only do dozens of Nike employees have a swoosh tattooed on their calves, but tattoo parlors all over North America report that the swoosh has become their most popular item. Human branding? Check.

The Branded Star There is another reason behind Nike's stunning success at disseminating its brand. The superstar athletes who form the building blocks of its image-those creatures invented by Nike and cloned by Adidas and Fila-have proved uniquely positioned to soar in the era of synergy: they are made to be cross-promoted. The Spice Girls can make movies, and film stars can walk the runways but neither can quite win an Olympic medal. It's more practical for Dennis Rodman to write two books, star in two movies and have his own television show than it is for Martin Amis or Seinfeld to play defense for the Bulls, just as it is easier for Shaquille O'Neal to put out a rap alb.u.m than it is for Sporty Spice to make the NBA draft. Only animated characters-another synergy favorite-are more versatile than sports stars in the synergy game.

But for Nike, there is a downside to the power of its own celebrity endorsers. Though Phil Knight will never admit it, Nike is no longer just competing with Reebok, Adidas and the NBA; it has also begun to compete with another brand: its name is Michael Jordan.