TY - JOUR
T1 - The Contingency of Corporate Political Advocacy
T2 - Nike’s ‘Dream Crazy’ Campaign with Colin Kaepernick
AU - Hoffmann, Jochen
AU - Jørgensen, Karina Nyborg
AU - Averhoff, Charlotte Vestergaard
AU - Olesen, Simone
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - An emerging field of research views Corporate Political Advocacy (CPA) as a communication strategy that responds to the challenges of public relations in divided societies. CPA takes a political position in public and, by doing so, appears to deliberately alienate some of its stakeholders. This study challenges the assumption that CPA discards a unifying epideictic rhetoric in favour of agonistic politics. The investigated case is Nike’s Dream Crazy campaign starring American football player Colin Kaepernick, whose protest against race discrimination in the United States sparked a heated public debate. Although the critical analysis of the campaign and responses on Twitter reveal deep political cleavages, Nike is concurrently engaged in unchallenged communication praising the hyper-individualism of a market ideology. The epideictic contingency of Nike’s CPA undermines the social cause ostensibly at the heart of the campaign: the fight against racial discrimination.
AB - An emerging field of research views Corporate Political Advocacy (CPA) as a communication strategy that responds to the challenges of public relations in divided societies. CPA takes a political position in public and, by doing so, appears to deliberately alienate some of its stakeholders. This study challenges the assumption that CPA discards a unifying epideictic rhetoric in favour of agonistic politics. The investigated case is Nike’s Dream Crazy campaign starring American football player Colin Kaepernick, whose protest against race discrimination in the United States sparked a heated public debate. Although the critical analysis of the campaign and responses on Twitter reveal deep political cleavages, Nike is concurrently engaged in unchallenged communication praising the hyper-individualism of a market ideology. The epideictic contingency of Nike’s CPA undermines the social cause ostensibly at the heart of the campaign: the fight against racial discrimination.
KW - Agonistics
KW - Colin Kaepernick
KW - Nike
KW - corporate political advocacy
KW - culture industry
KW - epideictic rhetoric
KW - racial discrimination
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85085194504&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/2046147X20920802
DO - 10.1177/2046147X20920802
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2046-147X
VL - 9
SP - 155
EP - 175
JO - Public Relations Inquiry
JF - Public Relations Inquiry
IS - 2
ER -