【中英双语】在美国的文化冲突中，耐克选边站队-中英创新产业园CBIIP

Nike picks a side in America’s culture war
在美国的文化冲突中，耐克选边站队
Nike’s “Just do it” slogan first aired in 1988, at the end of a 30-second television advert that featured an 80-year-old long-distance runner jogging cheerfully across the Golden Gate Bridge. The sun shone,杨绿润 forgettable music plinked and nobody was remotely offended.
1988年，耐克标语“Just do it”在一个时长30秒的电视广告中首次播出。广告结尾，一位80岁的长跑运动员缓缓跑过金门大桥，兴奋欢呼。
当时阳光灿烂，背景音乐叮铃响起，没有人觉得受到丝毫的冒犯。


This week, to celebrate the anniversary of that trademark, Nike tweeted a black-and-white picture of another athlete. Colin Kaepernick , the former American football quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, stared into the camera with the words, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything” across his face. Everybody went nuts.
本周，为庆祝品牌成立30周年，耐克在推特上发布了另一名运动员——前美式橄榄球旧金山49人队四分卫科林-卡佩尼克（Colin Kaepernick）的黑白照片。照片中他注视着镜头，，“怀揣信仰，哪怕付出一切。”字样在他的脸上出现。此举激发了强烈的民众情绪。

Kaepernick is well known for kneeling during the national anthem at the start of National Football League games, to draw attention to police brutality against African-Americans. His protest has been widely copied by peers in a sport where most players are black赵维欢 , and has split the country about the most American of sports.
为抗议警察对非裔美国人施暴，卡佩尼克在美国职业橄榄球联盟NFL赛前国歌时公然跪地（而非行立礼），一举出名。他的抗议举动在黑人为主的运动项目中被纷纷效仿，并将美国运动员分立成两部分。

To supporters, Kaepernick is showing respect for the victims of racial injustice; to critics, he is showing disrespect for the US anthem, its flag and its troops, who-as Fox News commentators said-have a stronger claim to have made sacrifices.
对于支持者来说，卡佩尼克表现出对种族歧视受害者的尊重；在批评人士看来，他的举动是对美国国歌、国旗和美国军队的不尊重汉师附小。正如福克斯新闻评论员所说，美国军队同样为国家做出了巨大的牺牲。
With a narrow majority of Americans telling pollsters that anthem protests are inappropriate and the NFL almost as polarisinga brand as Fox or its cable news rival MSNBC, this sounds like the worst kind of debate for a brand to stumble into .
少数美国人告诉民调机构，抗议国歌的说法是不恰当的，在将品牌争议两极化方面，美国职业橄榄球联盟（NFL）与福克斯（Fox）或其有线新闻竞争对手微软全国有线广播电视公司（MSNBC）的做法几乎如出一辙，这似乎是品牌争议中最糟糕的情况。
The backlash was swift. Sneakers were burnt, boycotts were threatened, Nike brand’s favourability plunged in surveys, and the company lost 3.2 per cent of its $130bn market value in a day.
市场反应紧随而来浴血金枪 ，耐克运动鞋被焚烧，抵制活动受到威胁，调查显示耐克品牌的受欢迎程度大幅下降，该公司1300亿美元的市值在一天蒸发了3.2%。

“Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts. I wonder if they had any idea that it would be this way?” tweeted President Donald Trump.
特朗普总统在推特上说权色仕途 ，“耐克正因民众的愤怒和抵制走向全面溃败，我想知道他们是否清楚结果会是这样？”
Nike has good reasons to believe its gamble will pay off. First, it is reacting to a media environment where little of the advertising wisdom of 1988 still applies. An amiable octogenarian is nobody’s idea of an influence, while Kaepernick has 6m followers across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
耐克有充分的理由相信它能打赢这场仗。首先，它活跃在一个媒体主导的环境中，1988年的广告创意很难继续适用当下，（在这样的环境下）没有人会认为一位和蔼可亲的80岁老人有什么影响力，而卡佩尼克却是在Instagram,Twitter，和Facebook等社交平台上拥有600万粉丝的大号灞上秋居。

Nike has understood the power of celebrities since it signed Michael Jordan in 1984, but their influence is now amplified by social media-and by controversy. By Apex Marketing’s calculation, Nike generated exposure worth more than $163m even before its TV version of the Kaepernick ad aired on Thursday during the NFL season’s opening game.
自从1984年签下迈克尔-乔丹以来，耐克公司就明白了名人的宣传力量，现在他们的影响力被社交媒体和争议所放大。根据Apex 营销公司的计算，在周四美国职业橄榄球联盟（NFL）赛季首场比赛的卡佩尼克电视广告播出之前，耐克创造的曝光价值就已经超过了1.63亿美元。
This is Nick’s second reason to be confident: drill down into this week’s polls and they show that support for Nike and Kaepernick is strongest among millennial or Gen-Z, African-American, liberal urbanites-the group Nike targets.
耐克自信的第二个原因：深入研究本周的民意调查可以发现，千禧一代、Z世代、非洲裔美国人和城市自由人群对耐克和卡佩尼克的支持度最高，而他们正是耐克的目标消费群体。
The company’s biggest risk is becoming “mainstream楚剧访友, the usual, everywhere, tamed,”Eunkyu Lee, a professor of marketing at Syracuse University says. Courting controversy forces its most dedicated fans to defend it and catches the eye of more neutral consumers.
雪城大学（Syracuse University）营销系教授Eunkyu Lee说道，该公司最大的风险是变得主流、平淡、烂大街、无创意。争议的发生使得最忠实的粉丝站出来为其辩护，并引起更多中立消费者的关注。
Finally, Nike will have been encouraged by studies showing that consumers reward brands for speaking up on divisive social issues. But it is doing something more novel and calculated than other multinationals that have weighed in on immigration ,gun control or race: it did not stumble into this controversy; it sought it.
最终，为社会不公现象发声的企业总会受到消费者的认可和赞许，而耐克就是一个鲜活的例子。与在移民、枪支管制或种族问题上反复权衡说辞跨国公司相比，耐克的举动实属异常，但其遭遇并不是偶然，而是耐克故意而为之。
A presidential tweet and some viral videos of singed shoes should not bother Nike in the least. Culture wars can be great for business-if you know which side of them your customers are on.
总统先生的推特和一些焚烧鞋子的过激视频应当不会对耐克造成影响。如果你知道自己的客户群体在文化战争中支持哪一边浜尾京介 ，那么文化战对生意绝对是件好事骂醒我歌词 。

Source: Financial Times, 9 September,
撰文 Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.