Friday, November 18, 2005
Nike Nixes Donations
Nike has refused Serbian government requests to donate several thousand counterfeit Nike shoes and sweatshirts to charities in the area, saying to do so would hurt their "brand image" and instead has ordered their destruction.
How can their brand image be tarnished by an act of good will? U.S. customs had no problems turning over thousands of similar items to hurricane Katrina victims. Why should an Eastern European counry be treated differently? How hard would it be to mandate that the Nike swoosh be removed from any such donated items? All is takes is a person with a seamripper. I'm sure most of those charitable organizations would be only to happy to oblige in order to given several thousand pairs of shoes for free. And that would go a long way to improving brand image, rather than attemptint to maintain it at the current status quo.
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