Colin Kaepernick is the face of Nike’s 30th annual “Just Do It” campaign. And it took all of 6 seconds, (about the time needed to read and comprehend Kaepernick’s tweet to that effect) for the campaign to catch fire and explode on social media. It read: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything. #JustDoIt”
 
What makes this so incendiary is Kaepernick is also the face of the ‘take-a-knee’ campaign in the NFL. He lost his job as a starting quarterback because he refused to stand for the pre-game Star Spangle Banner in 2016. He says he was protesting racial injustice in the United States. He hasn’t been able land a pro-football job since.
 
The reaction, on both sides, is entirely predictable. At one extreme there are those who are burning their Nike apparel, some have even found it necessary to share video of them urinating on their shoes. Otherwise, there is a legion of  converts vowing to make Nike their brand of choice for athletic wear.
 
I have little doubt that this will soon be the subject of a presidential tweet that will slam “failing Nike” and raise this ‘elitist campaign’ to a capitol offense against the POTUS (people of the United States), not to mention a personal affront to the White House resident.
 
In the clichéd short term – Nike wins when you consider all the earned media its enjoying. Good or bad, the discussion and comment about the campaign will be on cable news teleprompters for days. This is the opening week of the NFL regular season after all, so it will reignite the interest and attention in what made Colin Kaepernick famous (or infamous) to non-football enthusiasts.
 
So, it’s easy to say Nike’s opportunistic and timely in it’s use of Kaepernick. But it’s more than that.
 
This makes perfect sense for the Nike brand. Nike isn’t about running shoes or hockey helmets or sweat-wicking workout wear.

It’s also about you doing the right thing – whatever you think that may be. One campaign encouraged us to let girls play organized sports – Just Do It. Another highlighted an elite athlete who ran 80 miles a week and 10 marathons and year; he lived with HIV – Just Do It.
 
So the Kaepernick campaign isn’t out of character for Nike. Nor would I say is it all that risky. The notion that Kaepernick stood up for something he believed in, that was beyond himself, is a growing trend in athletic marketing.
 
The emphasis is on unselfishness rather than winning at all cost.
 
Graeme Newell is the President of 602 Communications; he specializes in emotional branding. He says we’re all familiar with sports marketing campaigns that focused on winning as an individual accomplishment. Teamwork isn’t part of the narrative.
 
But that’s changing since Millennials have asserted themselves as a primary market for sports gear. Newell says advertising to that demographic is changing the definition of winning.  He points to a Nike ad from 2014 in which Lebron James wins for his team and his community.

Millennial values have forced  the marketing narrative to shift from me to we. Newell says Nike’s not alone. There is a growing list of purpose driven companies that have reformed their business model to capture that shift. It affects everything from hiring protocols to customer engagement. Their success is based on their ability to make their brand about their consumers’ experience.
 
Nike saw this coming years ago. If there were a brand for emotional branding – it would be Nike.
 
You’re missing the point if you think this new campaign is about Kaepernick’s brand. It’s about a powerful Millennial market. It’s about a company willing to take its own advice to confidently venture outside of the comfort zone and “Just Do It”.

The question being posed this week is whether we are over-stating John McCain’s heroism and statesmanship only because he presents such as stark contrast to the incumbent President of the United States. And I suppose that’s a possibility. But consider these quotations: “We were born to love and we were born to have the courage for it” Does that sound like the current president?
 
How about “I don’t know how you could impeach somebody who’s done a great job.” Does that sound like the current president?
 
It’s more likely and accurate to say it is the president, despite his worst efforts, who amplifies what is honourable about the late senator. It’s hard to believe, but the president looks worse than you would otherwise expect when he’s seen in the light of John McCain’s political career and personal sacrifice.
 
Throughout his life, McCain learned from experience, allowed his thinking to evolve, to publicly admit mistakes and even reverse his political positions on some key issues. And no one ever accused him of flip-flopping primarily because it was widely understood that Senator McCain was driven personally and politically to put his country first.
 
Does that sound like the current president?
 
During the 2008  U.S. Presidential campaign, McCain bucked the advice of his handlers and publicly supported George W. Bush’s commitment to ‘the surge’ in Iraq. The former Air Force pilot insisting he’d rather lose an election than lose a war. You may not agree with his position but you can’t argue that he was prepared to put the good of his country (as he saw it) ahead of his personal and political gain.
 
Does that sound like the current president?
 
That campaign lasted 18 months and, by some estimations, John McCain led the polls for no more than 10 days. But he refused to take the low road.
 
Does that sound like the current president?
 
McCain had the opportunity to play to the lowest common denominator among voters but refused to do so. The best example is when he was confronted by a ‘supporter’ at one of his town hall meetings who said she didn’t trust Barack Obama because “he’s an Arab.”
 
McCain shut her down, deftly and respectfully correcting her misunderstanding. He told her Barack Obama is a “decent family-man, (a) citizen who I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about.”
 
Does that sound like the current president?
 
It’s worth remembering the comment McCain made in his concession speech to Obama. He took personal responsibility for the defeat. He accepted it with grace and composure.
 
Does that sound like the current president?
 
This week McCain will be officially honoured in 3 cities over 5 days. He will lie in state at the Arizona State Capitol, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland and at the U.S Capitol.
 
Yet, on this day, the U.S. flag flies at full staff over the White House in Washington. According to reporting in the Washington Post, the president pulled the plug on an official White House statement that cited McCain’s heroism and acknowledged his extraordinary service to his country.
 
That has been the cause of hyper and breathless reporting on the cable news networks; it’s been footnoted by the McCain family’s demand that the incumbent president not attend his funeral; and it’s prompted earnest commentators to authoritatively declare that McCain and the president had a rocky relationship.
 
But it’s more accurate to say there was no relationship between the two men. So it certainly shouldn’t be surprising that the president isn’t welcome to attend McCain’s funeral. And it’s not about being a friend or foe – remember, McCain ran against Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and both former presidents have been invited to deliver eulogies.
 
Who among us could imagine the current president being half as gracious and self aware in the face of defeat or death? His behaviour is, and has been, typically un-presidential, so his petty, immature, disgraceful snub of John McCain is not at all surprising.
 
I made the point on my Weekend Morning Show on NEWSTALK 1010 in Toronto (you can stream it thru the iHeartRadio app:) that our American friends should mourn the passing of respectful debate and honourable politics when they note the passing of John McCain.
 
But the Senator said it best in his final memoir, “The Restless Wave”, written with Mark Salter.
 
“I’d like to see our politics begin to return to the purposes and practices that distinguish our history from the history of other nations. I would like to see us recover our sense that we are more alike than different. We are citizens of a republic made of shared ideals forged in a new world to replace the tribal enmities that tormented the old one. Even in times of political turmoil such as these, we share that awesome heritage and the responsibility to embrace it. Whether we think each other right or wrong in our views on the issues of the day, we owe each other our respect, as long as our character merits respect, and as long as we share, for all our differences, for all the rancorous debates that enliven and sometimes demean our politics, a mutual devotion to the ideals our nation was conceived to uphold, that all are created equal, and liberty and equal justice are the natural rights of all. Those rights inhabit the human heart, and from there, though they may be assailed, they can never be wrenched. I want to urge Americans, for as long as I can, to remember that this shared devotion to human rights is our truest heritage and our most important loyalty.”
 
McCain’s final thought reflects some fairly recent history – a time when disrespect wasn’t the only way to disagree, when political foes could be personal friends.
 
But it’s hard to imagine this current era of “Ya-but-debate”, driven by ad hominem insults and digital media bullying, led by the current House of Cowards in the West Wing and Congress will soon reflect ‘the better angels of our nature.”

I, like many of you, have you been watching what qualifies as the healthcare debate in the land of the free. The only thing that’s bi-partisan about this exercise in democracy is the lowest common denominator equal-access scream-fest driving the US cable news format.

For all of its warts, I can’t imagine trading our Canadian ‘universal’ healthcare for the abomination that they’ve glued together south of the border. I understand – first hand – the shortcomings of the Canadian system – but I know that paying my medical bills is unlikely to bankrupt me in my senior years.

The House of Representative has passed a new Healthcare plan that ‘fixes’ the plan championed by President Obama. I will leave it to the cable news network ‘specialists’ to pronounce on who will live and who will die in the land of the free.

The land of the free- where Americans have the constitutional right to be a mass murder victim - mowed down in a hail of high calibre semi-automatic gunfire because they have the right to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The same land of the free where legislators routinely and on script offer bowed heads, "thoughts and prayers" and requisite moments of silence to salve sorrows, erase memories and cleanse the slate in preparation for the next bloody, fatal assault we know is coming.

The land of the free where vile racists and libelous, bald-faced liars have the constitutional right to spew venomous, alternate facts and conspiracy theories without accountability.

The land of the free where you have the constitutional right to bear arms and the right to free speech without accountability, without regard for "the cost."

The land of the free – where you don't have a constitutional right to healthcare (because it's all about "the cost") – where you’re simply left with the right to dwell in the home of the brave once your benefits run out.

What comes around goes around.

With that in mind, it’s worth noting we witness the ascension of Donald Trump to President of the United States mere days after it was announced that the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus has popped its big top for the last time.

P.T. Barnum’s show may have ended but it’s been replaced by the MAKE AMERICA THE GREATEST show on earth. It’s been booked for four years, could be extended to eight and will be performed LIVE and continuously at 1600 Pennsylvania Blvd, (aside from the impromptu road show stops). It promises to be NEVER THE SAME THING ONCE. It will take your breath away 140 characters at a time with death defying Twitter posts.

This 21st century newer, bigger, better, great-again show has all the rubber necking qualities of the original American three ring spectacle.

Phineas Taylor Barnum, like the 45th President, was an inveterate self-promoting huckster who is often quoted as saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute” and “Every crowd has a silver lining.” Imagine how great his show might have been if he’d been able to avail himself of reality tv and social media!

​Barnum’s brand was burnished by his live acts and curiosities, highlighted by his menagerie of mutants and hoaxes.

There was no height too high for his hype. Barnum apparently felt no compunction to overstate or overblow a promotional claim so long as the paying public left the show feeling that they’d got their money’s worth.

All sounds a little familiar, eh?

Barnum had his Hippodrome, his freaks, giants and exotic woman.  Trump has his towers, the WWE and beauty pageants. Barnum had fire-eaters. Trump fired apprentices.

But Barnum had no time for fraudsters who deceived the vulnerable to make a buck. He actually testified against a photographer of the day who claimed he could photograph dead people! (The photographer, by the way, was married to a ‘healing medium’.)

Even for all his bluster and over-hyped self-promotion, the Circus King drew a line. He couldn’t abide “fake news”.  He made it his mission to expose the “tricks of the trade”. So maybe it’s poetic that the spectacle he founded announced its demise this week.
​
A century and a half later, the United States has elected the first Flat Earth President who rode a wave of unprecedented populism that was whipped up by a wilful acceptance of wilful ignorance and falsehoods, and it landed him in the White House.