On Labor Day, Nike unveiled the latest installment of their unbreakable “Just Do It” ad campaign with Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who has sparked an incredibly polarizing conversation by choosing to kneel during the national anthem. This simple act of protest has garnered huge response from supporters who have knelt with him, and detractors as high up as the President of the United States. Colin’s first display of protest occurred just over two years ago, and since then he’s found himself left off of all thirty-two NFL rosters, leaving many to wonder exactly why a player of his ability was without a job.
While this ad was a mere portrait of the athlete, the message at its core was that Nike was in full support of Kaepernick’s journey. This has had major repercussions in the first 48 hours of the ad going live, with none other than Donald Trump calling Nike’s ad is a sending “terrible message”. People are taking to social media to burn their Nike product, while the hashtag #BoycottNike has been in use by those who oppose the players’ right to protest the anthem.
As it turns out, the initial ad with Colin was just a table-setter for a two-minute spot called “Dream Crazy”, which starts with Nike Skateboarding athlete Nyjah Huston taking some hard falls off a rail, and features cameos by Serena Williams, LeBron James, Lacey Baker, and Kaepernick himself, who is revealed to be the narrator for this epic ad. See it in full below.