“The next Pre will not be born, they will be made”
EUGENE, OR (27 June, 2006) – At a press conference held today at University of Oregon’s Hayward Field, Nike CEO Mark Parker announced plans to take the marketing of Steve Prefontaine’s legacy to a whole new level with the introduction of PreNA. Expected to be available for the 2006 Christmas season, each tiny, yellow and green, swoosh-emblazoned vile of PreNA will contain actual fragments scraped from the bones of the American distance running legend.
“We thought we had run out of ways to use Pre’s memory as a marketing device,” said Parker “so we thought, why not use the man himself?” Nike did just that, secretly unearthing Prefontaine’s corpse and mining its genetic material. “With rapid advances in cloning technology, we expect customers will be able to use these bone fragments to literally grow their own Pre by 2032,” which Parker noted “is an Olympic year.”
PreNA will be available at Niketown, Finish Line Sports, and select specialty shops around the country. The retail price is expected to be around $800 per vile. Asked if the piece by piece sale of Prefontaine’s body would mark the end of “Pre” related marketing, Parker admitted “It’ll be hard to milk it any more than this. Maybe we’ll have to move on and just hope that Alan Webb dies in a tragic accident before reaching his competitive peak.”