Th3 Core

I thought the following video had an interesting perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLXzPDteFks

"The Gangster Marketing Move of 2018"

"Regardless of what you think of who's right or who's wrong on this issue, effectively the organization has arbitraged or traded older conservatives from red states whose, by the way, disposable income is declining, and traded them in for younger, affluent urban consumers who tend to be more progressive. Was this the right thing to do? We'll see. Was it the shareholder-driven thing to do? 100%."

I read that the press alone was worth $2b in advertising.  Clearly, they did the math.

It is very easy for people to hate a pro athlete who is more known for their outside the game drama than for their actual performance. The short term buzz provides a bit of a lift, but the long-term resentment from attaching oneself to a politically polarizing mascot in an age of increasing polarization might create an entry point for another competitor to launch & then later expand across.

Presuming red states keep getting economically screwed & presuming there won't be a blowback worse than Trump is perhaps a bad presumption.

I think New Balance ended up moving some of their shoe production offshore, but if they were purely domestic with their production then selling the whole patriotism angle would be pure marketing gold for them to do if they did a bunch of geo-targeted advertising where politics leaned right. They still do produce about a quarter of their shoes in the US.
https://www.themadeinamericamovement.com/products/are-new-balance-shoes-made-in-usa/
https://sneakers-magazine.com/behind-the-manufacturing-of-the-new-balance-1978/

The left/right divide is often an urban/rural divide as much as anything else.

How hard would it be to run statewide targeted ads that exclude 5 or 10 core urban areas?

Spinning up those marketing campaigns & making them speak a message to a base without also being polarizing will take a bit of time, but not doing it is a wasted opportunity for someone like New Balance.

Reminds me of other results of protests or boycotts against a brand. When people get all over Chick Fil A or In n Out and try to boycott them for donating money to causes that promote "traditional marriage" the lines are around the block from the people that support them. A couple years ago when those videos came out about Planned Parenthood selling body parts and the conservative right was up in arms against them the donations increased.

Nike is betting on the same thing here. Not sure it is necessarily a great long term strategy but Nike has enough going on that they can afford something like this from time to time. I know a lot of people who said they will never buy Nike again and a lot more that are buying more because of this.