By Jonathan Mathias
Before last week, I bet you'd never heard of the Nike Air Stab. But as a bit of a trainer fiend, I was well aware of this decidedly average design of shoe, first released in 1988, and one of the many old designs that Nike has been reissuing in recent years (because it can’t come up with any decent new trainer designs).
Yet suddenly, and without apparent provocation, Nike announces that it’s doing all of us a favour by withdrawing these widely unknown trainers from sale because they happen to be inappropriately named due to the current, arguably over-reported, climate of knife crime.
What’s all that about then?
Call me cynical, but I reckon this was a stunt and, in my opinion, it backfired badly – someone in marketing hurriedly decided that, under the guise of CSR, it might be a good idea to pull a product that wasn’t doing terribly well just to get some quick column inches.
But is this really a good thing for Nike? Why did they even feel the need to announce it rather than just discreetly removing the offending product? Nike doesn’t need this kind of publicity - if anything, people are now more likely to subconsciously associate Nike with teenagers killing each other. Not exactly great branding.
PS: Being even more cynical, if Nike were hoping to artificially create some kind of cult status around the Stab, it looks like they’ve got a long way to go yet.
PPS: For all the trainspotters – the name ‘Stab’ is a reference to the enhanced stability that the shoe claims to give its wearer.
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