Blame it on Nike, not Bode

I just can't work up a lather of indignance over Bode Miller's bust in Torino last month. The guy is what he is: a world-class athlete whose early training -- I'm talking childhood upbringing -- inspired his "spirit" to be, shall we say, "free". I'll leave it there. While the absence of a will to win in the soul of an Olympic athlete was puzzling to say the least, direct your indignation not toward any particular athlete but at the current state of sports marketing and branding. Or, in other words, the world Nike hath wrought. The swoosh isn't the only player here, of course. Plenty of sponsors have made spectacularly bad bets. Still, this rush to get on somebody's bandwagon, or get him/her on yours, is a relatively new phenomenon and one that isn't always the best thing for the brand. Bob Dorfman, creative head of Pickett Advertising in San Francisco, a guy I got to know a couple of years ago when I wrote a story on Stanford football for The Bootleg magazine, said it well last week in an interview with the SF Chron's C.W. Nevius (see latest column (03/04). "All it does it leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth." Dorfman bemoans the disappearance of yet another quaint tradition in our culture -- celebrating athletes after they achieved something rather than shoving them in our faces a priori. As Nike would tell it, and there is truth to this that marketers can't deny, you need to lockup a name and make a bet. If you don't, someone else will. And someone else might beat you to the next big name. Still, it was hard to watch NBC flog Michelle Kwan even as she was limping out of Italy, and see a visibly awkward Miller putting on his swoosh-face in that excruciating TV spot as he was melting down in real-time. The problem has to do with the size of the stakes in the world of branding-endorsing-flogging. Which is hardly "The World" as depicted in the ceremonies that open and close the Olympics.