Nike's "Dream Crazy" is the September 2018 advertising campaign that made Colin Kaepernick the face of 📝Nike's 30th-anniversary "Just Do It" push, built on the line "Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything."
Kaepernick opened the campaign by posting a black-and-white close-up of his own face carrying that line to Twitter. He had been the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 in protest of police brutality and racial injustice, and had been an unsigned free agent since 2017. The two-minute film he narrates also features Serena Williams and LeBron James. It was created by Wieden+Kennedy, Nike's advertising agency of more than three decades, and produced by Park Pictures.
Reaction split immediately. Critics burned Nike shoes and defaced merchandise, and polling showed a sharp drop in brand favorability. Nike's share price nonetheless reached a record high within weeks, adding roughly $6 billion to its market value. In September 2019 the spot won the Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Commercial — Nike's first Emmy since 2002.
📝Dream Crazy is a frequently cited case of 📝Commodity Activism, the merging of purchase behavior with political identity, and of the 📝Belief-Driven Sellers posture it implies. Its target is the 📝Belief-Driven Buyers segment: 📝Edelman's 2018 Earned Brand study found 64% of consumers globally would choose, switch, avoid, or boycott a brand based on its stand on social or political issues, up 13 points from 2017.