JUST DO IT…

Did you ever have one of Nike’s iconic posters hanging in your room? Do you have one of their running posters, Air Jordan, Mars Blackmon, or any of their posters meant to inspire you? I did. And if you like Nike’s old school iconic posters of Michael Jordan and Spike Lee, you must go see the Poster House’s (NYC) current exhibition, “Just Frame It: How Nike Turned Sports Stars into Superheroes”. It is a must-see private collection of posters and television commercials from the 1980s to the present.

It takes you through the beginnings of Air Jordan and Mars Blackmon (a.k.a. Spike Lee) and the N.B.A. players that adorned posters with names like The Board Room (too many NBA rebounders to name here), Secretary of Defense (Bobby Jones), Iceman (George Gervin), National Defense (David Robinson), Dr. Dunkenstein (Darrel Griffith), L.A. Law (James Worthy)…I mean the number of fantastic marketing posters that Nike did in the 80s & 90s will live on, not for the product, per say, but for the heroic icons they gave us which featured their shoes…

The marketing genius of giving us the personas, the heroes, and putting their clothing and their shoes on them – but not calling attention to those items, made them live on in marketing infamy. I mean, we still hang them, remember them, and go to a museum to see them. The “Swoosh” lives on even without calling attention to it. In their attempt to give us “Superheroes”, they did what no other company had done before…they had us all hanging up posters about basketball & running shoes…all emblazoned with a swoosh.