Coasting through Ubiq, which is like the museum of sneakers that you could afford if you quit overtexting, I pick up the Oregon Runner.
It’s like this: Nike designs sneakers that are deliberately weathered-looking, creates a mini-zine called the Oregon Runner, and packs it with mildly clever ’70s satire complete with running tips, fake ads and bogus classifieds. They’re not even trying to be subtle here, just with it. Vice-y. The ‘zines come with little buttons that say things like “The Mustache Rides Again.” All to sell you, the by-now default hipster, a running shoe.
The Waffle Racer, to be exact. This is what happens when you hire a bunch of people who think they know/are hipsterula major to market the campaign.
Granted, it’s a neat kick. Classic nylon, all attention on the swoosh, style that cannot be denied. They could sit back and let the sneaker sell itself. Instead, they’ve done precisely what Colt 45 and American Apparel have done, and all other brands associated with the tao of Vice. It’s called the over-sell. You bend over backwards (sometimes literally) and saturate the whole instead of the select, which will make you a ton of money but get you enough backlash to alienate your intended target. So now you have the next five minutes to jog fashionably, minus the nerd-out technotronic Asics that tourists wear with knee socks, before those same tourists ooh and ah and lace up the Waffle Racer.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 10:43 am.