Nike & Kanye West

Here's a new initiative from Nike in an attempt to influence and be particapatory in the street culture:



Rob Stone runs Cornerstone in New York, a company that
specialises in bringing music and marketing together so both profit
from the association.

“The record business is in trouble,” he says, “But music is thriving.”
The big problem is how to make money out of it, given that about
90% of all music is now downloaded or shared for free?

Well, the only people who seem to have any money these days are
brand owners so the music industry has been finding new and
interesting ways of relieving them of some of it.

Sting’s ‘Desert Rose’ video was a Jaguar ad; Fergie of the Blackeyed
Peas has been commissioned to write a song for a fashionwear
store and Puff Diddy sang ‘Pass the Courvoisier’ but never before
has a branded song been nominated for a Grammy.
Yet that’s what has just happened with ‘Better Than I’ve Ever
Been’. Art and commerce have met in a hip-hop song
masterminded by Cornerstone, featuring rap-meisters Kanye West,
Naz, Rakim and NRS-One, who take it in turns to push the song
along.

If you watch the vid, you may notice a pair of Nikes getting spray-
painted onto a wall and you may hear the lyric about Nike Air
Force Ones, “the hustler shoe/That I am accustomed to.”
The song celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of Air Force Ones
as well as promoting the new, improved versions.

Kanye West may well be “better than I’ve ever been”, but so too are
the shoes. Has this jingle in disguise done anything for Nike?
It’s already had over 3,000 plays on radio and a million Youtube
viewings.

As a result Nike are said to be considereing launching their own
record label. Clearly, bro’, they do think there’s some value to
creating their own audiences rather than buying someone else’s.

/Patrick Collister/