🎾 Travis Scott vs John McEnroe 🥊
behind the Nike's latest marketing stunt
GM everyone. Last night I had a special meal at Casetta prepared by guest chef Pierce Abarnathy. The food was delish but the dish stuck in my mind was the cake, layers of squash crumb cake with an incredible icing. It was extremely Autumnal. Apparently we got the last slice of the night, to the dismay of Jessie Andrews who was seated next to us. Next time, you can for ask for a bite!
Headlines
Ye has named Gosha Rubchinskiy the lead designer of YEEZY. If it was 2016, I’d be shaking. Tough to look away, we all love watching a train crash.
Kendall Dickieson, the genius behind Graza’s social media is launching a newsletter using Beehiiv. I asked her what made her choose Beehiiv and she said, “truly have just heard great things and most of my friends are on it!”
NYT: Kids are creating powerpoint slides as Christmas gift wishlists. I do love this and would have done something similar as a kid. Now I get paid to make decks. Full circle. This year I sent my parents a tabled Notion document LOL.
Let’s get into the topic of today’s newsletter, Nike’s latest marketing stunt to promote yet another Cactus Jack shoe—
Mac vs. Jack
The Cactus Jack x Mac Attack shoe has long been in the works. Travis Scott was first spotted wearing the classic John McEnroe endorsed shoe all the way back in 2021.
Last year, Nike brought back the shoe with a variety of collabs with brands like Social Status (on sale LOL)
Now in a last ditch effort to push the shoe, the brand is leaning on their biggest mover: Travis Scott. Over the Summer, Nike released a photoshoot of the two, which I think was well executed.
I am not quite sure why the shoe didn’t drop over the Summer, especially considering the immense hype surrounding Scott’s long-awaited album, Utopia.
Now, Nike is resorting to a tried and true marketing strategy: creating a fake beef.
The Call
In a ‘leaked’ zoom call to discuss the release of the shoe, John McEnroe loses his temper (as he is known to do) at Scott, claiming not cleverly naming their planned shoe the ‘Cactus Mac’ was disrespectful. From there, McEnroe storms off the call. Many fans believed this clip to be authentic. I think anyone working in marketing could see right through this staged call. I mean do you really think Nike has Zoom’s with John and Travis Scott together? no.
The ‘beef’ escalated when The People Gallery interviewed John on an NYC street. John was stanced up, standing on business that the shoe should be named after him. He looks so funny in this clip. I want to see John on the street like this and catch a pic so bad.
Then, Scott ‘responds’ by spray painting a John McEnroe memorial.
and then later hitting John’s car.
At this point it was all but confirmed this ‘beef’ was orchestrated to build buzz around their collab shoe. Nike revealed this and announced the release date yesterday, and they dropped more photos for the campaign.
Thoughts
Overall, I do like this PR stunt. I think it was fun and I liked how Nike’s social team leveraged content creators like The People Gallery to ‘organically’ capture the beef spilling out over the internet. They could have just dropped a photo of the shoe and it would have still sold out, so I like the extra effort to create a compelling story, and leveraging McEnroe’s notably angry personality. (BTW: McEnroe’s cameo in Curb is one of my fav episodes. The Freak Book is top-tier)
There have been many other PR stunts in a similar vein. The Kanye versus 50 Cent magazine cover debating who would sell the most albums in 2007 comes to mind.
The only problem is the shoe is horrible. I don’t know how much longer kids and middle aged men are going to keep buying Travis Scott Nike’s.
Bradley Cooper (I saw Maestro last week… it was fine) is one of the biggest offenders of wearing Travis Scott sneakers past a certain age and looking ridiculous.
About Jake
Jake Bell is a content marketing strategist based in NYC. He specializes in branding, art direction, creative strategy, content creation, and making things cool.
To get in touch visit www.jb.studio
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