Colin Kaepernick's Nike campaign is more than just a manufactured controversy – it shows how divided the US has become

Nike is going to sell an awful lot of sneakers after making Colin Kaepernick the face of its “Just Do It” anniversary ad campaign.

There’s nothing like controversy for the purposes of creating a conversation, waking up the media, raising your brand profile, shifting units and raking in dollars, euros and pesos. I would have said pounds there too, but Brexit has made sterling worth less than Andrex.

The first three of those boxes had been ticked within seconds of ESPN breaking the news of the campaign. The fourth is surely coming. People will part with their cash. I might join them with the spare euros I have left over from this year’s holiday.

The timing could hardly have been more perfect with the NFL’s season about to start and the still unemployed quarterback, who caused uproar by kneeling during the national anthem, in the midst of a case alleging that its owners colluded to keep him out of the league. He won a notable victory last week when the arbitrator hearing denied the league’s request for summary judgement in its favour.

The fact that Nike is a commercial partner of the league, and supplies its kit, adds still more spice to a combustible mix. Marketing genius!

Sure, I get it. Nike is aiming to make money off this. But what it has done by hiring and backing Kaepernick (he’s reportedly been on the payroll for quite some time), is still both unusually bold and important.

For a start, while advertisers like controversy, they also prefer it to be controlled. Let’s be honest, most of the fusses about ads we see aren’t really controversies at all. They are faux controversies, carefully calibrated to upset people who like to get upset.

The latter will typically be people outside of the target market. So no danger.

This is different.

The new Nike ad bears the line “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything” superimposed over Kaepernick’s face. Towards the bottom is the famous Swoosh logo with, of course, “Just Do It.”

It seems to have been deliberately designed to trigger the crazier breeds of right winger across the USA and beyond. "Look! That’s the first guy to kneel during the national anthem before an NFL game. Run. Run! Get me to my Fox News safe space. Just not in Nikes. Anything but Nikes."

Predictably YouTube’s substantial corps of loons were falling over each other to get the first video up of a Nike product being burned.

I found the bloke (they are all blokes and usually bearded ones, which I find depressing as an advocate of facial hair) trying to burn a white Nike sock by frying it on an electric hob particularly amusing.

There was no visible impact made upon it. I felt like writing, “Dude, have you even heard of matches?” in the comments section but I didn’t want to trigger him again.

Hardly had ESPN’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell tweeted the news than someone had responded with “Nike will never see a dollar of mine again. Let's see how long they survive now”.

But it isn’t just the loons who are bothered by Kaepernick.

Polls have typically shown just over 50 per cent of Americans oppose the protests that he started (it is too often forgotten that he did so in an attempt to throw the spotlight on racial injustice, and the killing of unarmed black men by police).

Nike will surely have researched the reaction to Kaepernick of the subset of those people that buy its product prior to the start of the campaign. Assuming they’re younger and more diverse than the wider population, they may well be more open to what Kaepernick has been doing.

Twitter polls aren’t scientific, but for the record, of the 35,938 who clicked on Rovell’s, some 29 per cent said the ad would make them more likely to buy Nike, 21 per cent less. The other 50 per cent said it wouldn’t affect their decisions.

But Nike has done more than simply whip up a fuss in an attempt to sell pricey sneakers through using Kaepernick, and paying him as if he was still a star athlete too.

It has gone along with one of the most polarising figures in the US, and dived headfirst into one of its most fraught debates. It has also thumbed its nose at Donald Trump.

The president, remember, described NFL players who knelt during the anthem as “sons of bitches” and urged team owners to fire them.

In other words, Nike has taken sides, and that’s something big corporations don’t usually like to do.

Of course, the really divisive figure in all this is Trump. His attacks on journalists, anti-democratic behaviour, and race baiting are making that all the more necessary.

Those contemplating a similar step need to follow the advice of the slogan and Just Do It.