Reebok—Skechers—Under Armour—ON—Brooks. Fire your entire Marketing Departments

Agree with you. Cowards. But through in adidas as well as Tsegay and NAU have been wearing Nike as well.

Props to New Balance, Hoka, Saucony and anyone else doing it the right way.

Do NOT market the competitor wrote:

Props to New Balance, Hoka, Saucony and anyone else doing it the right way.

The one good Hoka athlete Dillon Maggard allegedly ran in dragonflies in his last 10k.

I will respectfully cross HOKA off the list.

Do NOT market the competitor wrote:

I understand that this board is mostly young kids and they only view things through the eyes of the athlete but advertising the competitor is a reason for dismissal from every company I’ve ever worked.

Wearing Nike for non Nike athletes is crazy and is creating an unbelievable commercial for Nike. The press is already asking questions and we haven’t even gotten to the Trials yet. If you work as a CMO at one of these companies you need to understand that you are stabbing your own brand in the back. When your athlete qualifies for the OG the shoe brand story will be bigger this year than ever.

Start putting your resume in to other companies because you should be fired moving forward.

Your forgetting that the only people the will recognize a blacked out pair of dragon flys and say HEY! Those arnt on running are the same people that will buy Nike it really does not matter.

WRONG.

Track and Field reporters already have this story on their radar. This will be a question with every athlete in the mix zone.

People watching on TV may not know but it will be brought to their attention.

Nike will be all over this. “Athletes that are being paid by other companies would rather buy our product”

Some of you don't know anything about how these things (marketing/shoe development) work and Nike already owns the Trials and the Olympics and only let their brand be shown anyway.

This board is mostly boomers and gen x.

Also you're wrong. I live in a city (Des Moines) and see plenty of runners wearing ON. They are not racers, they're running for weightloss or cardio. They don't know who runs for OAC, or what Dragonflies are. They just saw a nifty looking 150$ shoe, tried them on, and thought they would help their sore knees.

LOL No shoe company every made money on selling spikes.

bill bowerman himself made this thread

beodnight wrote:

Agree with you. Cowards. But through in adidas as well as Tsegay and NAU have been wearing Nike as well.

They need to yank the sponsorship. To the NAU athletes’ credit - not all of them have been wearing Nike. In fact, most of them were in Adidas at conference. Still, I find it odd that shoe companies will supply schools with shoes only to watch athletes turn around and wear Nike. This alone tells me there is something to the shoes. Athletes are turning down top-of-the-line spikes and going out and spending $150 for Dragonfly’s?

fxhjb wrote:

beodnight wrote:

Agree with you. Cowards. But through in adidas as well as Tsegay and NAU have been wearing Nike as well.

They need to yank the sponsorship. To the NAU athletes’ credit - not all of them have been wearing Nike. In fact, most of them were in Adidas at conference. Still, I find it odd that shoe companies will supply schools with shoes only to watch athletes turn around and wear Nike. This alone tells me there is something to the shoes. Athletes are turning down top-of-the-line spikes and going out and spending $150 for Dragonfly’s?

The thing with NAU is that these athletes are not sponsored by Adidas, the school just has a contract with them. Why wouldn’t they race in the dragonfly’s?

hoka has new carbon spikes for athletes that hit retail in december - I suspect DM did not receive approval

nopeeeeee wrote:

fxhjb wrote:

They need to yank the sponsorship. To the NAU athletes’ credit - not all of them have been wearing Nike. In fact, most of them were in Adidas at conference. Still, I find it odd that shoe companies will supply schools with shoes only to watch athletes turn around and wear Nike. This alone tells me there is something to the shoes. Athletes are turning down top-of-the-line spikes and going out and spending $150 for Dragonfly’s?

The thing with NAU is that these athletes are not sponsored by Adidas, the school just has a contract with them. Why wouldn’t they race in the dragonfly’s?

Yep, a contract that says “we’ll give you free gear if you wear it.” That’s cool if they want to wear dragonfly’s, but if I were adidas I’d stop giving them free stuff. I really doubt adidas cares though. Track spikes are probably way down on their list.

lke_4:25 wrote:

Your forgetting that the only people the will recognize a blacked out pair of dragon flys and say HEY! Those arnt on running are the same people that will buy Nike it really does not matter.

English, please.

srthjr

Do NOT market the competitor wrote:

WRONG.

Track and Field reporters already have this story on their radar. This will be a question with every athlete in the mix zone.

People watching on TV may not know but it will be brought to their attention.

Nike will be all over this. “Athletes that are being paid by other companies would rather buy our product”

Nike won’t give that story the time of day and half the time reporters couldn’t tell the difference between a pair of 72’ Cortezs and a pair of air zoom victories

rizzo98 wrote:

LOL No shoe company every made money on selling spikes.

They sponsor athletes to sell the brand not to sell spikes. Running in someone else’s spikes does not sell the brand and therefore makes sponsorship meaningless.

Meh, only a couple dozen internet backwater message board geeks worry about what someone they don't even know is wearing for spikes in racing. The logo that gets 100% of camera time (if the athlete is even good enough to get featured clearly on camera) is on the singlet and then it's the shorts. It's adverts or social media posts featuring the runner and brand that go the furthest in marketing brand impressions, anyway. A better reason to fire their marketing departments: I'd never buy their shoes for training, let alone racing, which is where vast majority of their sales come. And that really goes back to design, the original marketing angle.