Nike has been responsible for some of the most memorable ads of the last century, across everything from print to video. But even the most advertising-savvy brands can get it wrong sometimes. To prove that marketing teams shouldn’t always live by the ‘just do it’ mantra, here’s a rare blunder from the company.
Nike’s Latest Tweet
In a series of events, Nike published a couple of tweets as part of a marketing campaign for retiring basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski that left social media users confused.
The first was a tweet by Nike Basketball’s verified account that says “You can’t spell championship without K.”
You can’t spell coach without K. #CoachK pic.twitter.com/Gd8dJSCMVN
— Nike (@Nike) April 3, 2022
A second was a video ad tweeted by Nike that showed a string of words: “honor, respect, brotherhood, gold, Cameron, crazies, Durham, family,” which it says “you can’t spell without K.”
Retiring coach Mike Krzyzewski’s career ended after Duke lost to North Carolina in the Final Four of NCAA’s “March Madness.”
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According to former sportswriter Jeff Bartl, Nike’s marketing team had about 9 months to plan a Coach K retirement campaign, and it landed on, “Let’s do like a bunch of words without a K and be like, ya need a K to spell ’em and stuff. Get it?!”
Twitter Reacts To Nike
Unsurprisingly, the ad is getting roasted online. The execution was off, though, and it opened the door for plenty of jokes on social media.
“Someone isn’t going to win the spelling bee any time soon,” one user comments on Instagram,
“This is unironically ironically funny”. another wrote.
— Pete Mackin (@PeteMackin8) April 3, 2022
You can literally spell all those words without K
— CeSquared (@CeSquaredd) April 3, 2022
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You had all this time for this ad and couldn’t actually get one with you can’t spell DuKe without K? 😂
— Jaron Miller (@J_RON_24) April 3, 2022
Reporter Daniel Friedman added: “Literally none of these words have the letter K. The most hilarious part about this is that the word ‘basketball’ was just sitting there for the taking (and has a K). Still Nike decided to go with literally any other word (that didn’t have a K).”
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