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From: info <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 11:39 PM
Subject: [mobilize-globally] A Must Read on Nike! from NEWSWEEK
Subject:
[MLNews!*] [SOLE] A Must Read on Nike! from NEWSWEEK
Date:
Thu, 08 Mar 2001 15:31:47 -1200
From:
"Claudia K. White, BS, CT" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization:
Angelfire
(http://email.angelfire.mailcity.lycos.com:80)
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
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--------- Forwarded Message ---------
DATE: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 16:49:25
From: Peter Romer-Friedman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Student Org for Labor Econ and Equality <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Swoosh Wars: In an operation modeled on the Clinton campaign machine,
Nike takes
on its enemies
By Tony Emerson
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
March 12 issue
The campus radicals met their shadow from Nike in Chicago. It was day
six of a
barnstorming summer "Truth Tour," accusing
Niketown megastores of selling sneakers and clothes made in
sweatshops.
STARTING OUT FROM New York, the 10 college activists had planned
excitedly for a
daily Webcast of their coming adventure, modeled on MTV's "Road
Rules." But as
they motored west in a big recreational vehicle, they grew
increasingly
bewildered that Nike managed to call out the local police to foil
their every
rally. Finally, banished to the street outside Niketown Chicago,
Carrie Brunk
spotted a lean man with salt-and-pepper hair who stood out in a motley
crowd
chanting anti-Nike slogans. "He was wearing the Nike corporate-casual
line you
know, with the swoosh on the collar. Real sharp," says Brunk.
"Frankly,
we were amazed they would send this bigwig from the corporate
headquarters to
follow 10 kids in an RV."
The elegant gentleman introduced himself as Vada Manager, Nike
director of global
issues management, but the students still had no idea what they were
up against.
Over the course of the 13-day tour, a NEWSWEEK reporter interviewed
dozens of
students, fellow activists and company officials, assembling an inside
look at
one battle in the running war between anti-globalization protesters
and one of
their favorite targets, the world's largest shoe and apparel company.
While
rivals lie low, Nike has launched a counteroffensive true to its "in
your face"
culture. A longtime Washington operative, Manager says he was hired by
Nike in
1997 to provide "political insight and strategy." Using the "permanent
campaign"
of the Clinton White House as a
model, Manager now answers every attack, no matter how small, from
unions and
activists to the United Students Against Sweatshops, who organized the
summer
Truth Tour. Behind the scenes, Manager taps a network of campus allies
for
"direct intelligence" on the student movement. Tipped off in advance,
he
dispatched teams of senior sales and security executives to head off
the Truth
Tour at every store on its route. He alerted police to the identity of
the
students and to be ready for violence, and took some satisfaction when
the tour
fell apart before reaching its final target: Nike headquarters in
Beaverton,
Oregon.
"When the students saw the growing security and police presence, it
had a
deterrent effect, and I think it went very smoothly," says Manager.
"Nike
approaches this as it approaches everything, as competition. And we
aim to win."
STORMING NIKETOWN
Inside the Nike campus, set on 174 verdant acres behind a high earthen
wall,
executives described the students as tools of far more powerful
forces. Exposes
about long hours, child labor and toxic glues at factories used by
Nike first
linked it to the "sweatshop" charge in 1992. Nike quickly became what
Manager
calls "the poster corporation" of the emerging anti- globalization
movement,
targeted for its size, fame and worldwide reach. By 1998 the sweatshop
cause had
taken hold on U.S. campuses, mingling on occasion with union protests
at
Niketowns. By the time black-suited anarchists stormed Niketown
Seattle
during the World Trade Organization summit in December 1999, Manager
was waiting
inside with extra security, escape routes at the ready and a sense
that students,
anarchists and unions were now part of one broad anti-Nike front. "It
saddens
me," says Nike VP for corporate responsibility Dusty Kidd. "I think
one day the
students will wake up and realize they've been used by their
mentors in the union movement."
The counteroffensive came straight from the top. In an office
overlooking Lake
Nike at the heart of his campus, founder and chairman Phil Knight says
he decided
in late 1997 to seize "the initiative" against protesters out to trash
the brand
he once called "my novel, my painting." It was a dark time for Nike.
After
tripling in the 1990s to more than $9 billion, Nike sales had hit a
plateau.
Shares were falling, morale was tanking and sweatshop activists were
at the gate
with a 40-foot cutout of Knight, "corporate villain." Debate erupted
inside Nike
over whether to abandon collegiate apparel, rather than risk further
controversy
in a niche that provides only about 1 percent of Nike sales. Rival
brands were
lying low or pulling out of the college market an
option Knight rejected. "The students are just one of the weird
anti-globalization bedfellows who have made Nike their main target
from the
beginning, and they're not going away," says Knight. "This is going to
be a long
fight, but I'm confident the truth will win in the end."
The risks seemed obvious. "It's interesting Nike has chosen to take on
these
students, who represent their core young customers," says Atlanta
brand
consultant Alicia Reiss. "In the long run, they risk alienating youth,
subtly
eroding the brand." Interesting, but no surprise. Nike had
revolutionized the
$2.5 billion college-apparel market by signing multimillion-dollar
marketing
deals that allowed it to place its trademark swoosh on the uniforms
and stadiums
of nearly all the top collegiate sports teams in America. For Nike,
retreat would
have been high-profile humiliation.
"Nike had a choice, fight back or sit back and take it," says Mike
Pallerino,
editor of Sports Trend Info. "And remember, this is Nike. They don't
f-k around."
'THE GREAT SATAN' SPEAKS
Working from a "war room" in Beaverton, a team of Nike executives came
up with a
plan. They would set the "industry standard" for sweatshop reform, and
promote it
with Nike's famous attitude. On May 8, 1998, Knight delivered his
first speech in
Washington, introducing himself sarcastically to the National Press
Club as "the
great Satan." Knight acknowledged past problems in Nike's network of
700 contract
factories overseas, and unveiled a package of reform, including a
minimum working
age of 16, maximum weekly hours of 50 and inspectors to police the new
rules.
Inside Nike, the speech was a "watershed event" that required "a sea
change in
the company culture," says Knight.
In short, a company that still thinks of itself as an Oregon maverick
entered
politics. The war-room team became a standing operation and beefed up
its
Washington lobby. Manager has broad power to assemble "virtual teams"
of
executives and outside consultants to respond to any challenge. He
hired
pollsters to study the sweatshop controversy, and says the results so
far show
that while "many" consumers do associate Nike with sweatshops, a
"negligible" few
care enough to stop buying Nikes. In a
series of ads in major college newspapers, Nike invited students on
Truth Tours
to see Nike factories for themselves, and spoofed anyone who would get
facts from
"the guy carrying a poster and chanting, 'Nike sucks'."
"This is out of the Clinton playbook: leave no charge unanswered,
control the
agenda," says Manager, 39 and a veteran of four Democratic
presidential
campaigns. Meanwhile, Nike threw its weight behind White House plans
for a
watchdog group to certify clothes made in "clean factories." Knight
and other
industry leaders created the Fair Labor Association in a Rose Garden
ceremony
with Bill Clinton in February 1999, and the response was swift.
Dismissing the White House plan as "PR cover for Nike," the United
Students
Against Sweatshops mobilized to demand that schools give workers and
students
power to inspect factories making collegiate apparel for Nike and
other brands.
They built a shantytown at Yale, occupied administration buildings at
Michigan
and Wisconsin, chained themselves together by the neck in a boardroom
at
Kentucky. As the protests swelled into the biggest campus uprising
since the
early 1980s, Nike was the only
manufacturer to answer in public. When the University of Oregon said
it would
agree to the USAS inspection plan, Knight withdrew a $30 million
personal gift
and lashed out at the school, his alma mater for "meddling in the
world economy
where I make my living."
CONFRONTATION ON 57TH STREET
Realizing they could get a rise out of Knight and angered by his
"condescension
and arrogance," the USAS decided to launch its own Truth Tour against
Nike.
Things got ugly on day one, Aug. 3, in New York. The students pulled
up outside
Niketown on 57th Street in an RV rented and driven by members of the
needleworkers union. Before they could drop a single banner, dozens of
burly Nike
security officers swooped in, setting off a melee that spilled over
five floors
of the megastore and left one needleworkers organizer, Jim Grogan,
with a cracked
rib.
Manager got advance notice of the tour through a network of paid
student sales
reps and friendly administrators at more than 200 universities with
Nike apparel
deals. He monitors college papers and anti-sweatshop Web sites, and
describes
listening on the phone while administrators report on anti-Nike
protests outside
their windows. "I've never called Nike in alarm, but we do watch,"
says Mike Low,
licensing director at the University of Arizona, a major Nike school.
In talks
with Nike, Low says, he has broken down the student movement into
three strains:
"good-hearted liberals," "hateful radicals" and "anarchists who just
want to
destroy things."
That last group worries Nike most. Since 1997 there have been 40 to 50
protests
at Niketowns. Last year anarchists lit firecrackers, smashed pumpkins
and tossed
clothes racks inside an Oregon store. In fact, such "in-store actions"
have grown
so common, says Manager, that "we have pretty good relations with
police desk
officers in all the cities where there are Niketowns."
AN INTIMIDATING WELCOME
It was easy to prepare an intimidating welcome for the Truth Tour. The
Nike team
took videotape of the New York fracas and relayed it, along with bios
of the RV
activists (downloaded from the Truth Tour Web site), to police all
along the
route. In Chicago, Nike hired off-duty police to beef up security, and
they
greeted several startled Truth Tour protesters by name before hustling
them out.
"They were like, 'Hello, Carrie, you're not welcome in the store
today'," says
Carrie Brunk.
The tour sputtered to a stop at a USAS organizing conference in
Eugene, Oregon,
where leaders of the movement predicted Nike's "crackdown" would only
inspire
wider protests this spring. A day later, five Truth Tour stragglers
arrived on
the Nike campus for a final showdown. They drew shocked stares in
their black
anti-sweatshop T shirts and immediately asked
the war-room team to "just sit and listen." They demanded, among other
things,
that Nike "stop criminalizing student
activists." Steaming, the Nike executives demanded "some respect" and
a chance to
defend their factory record. Kidd offered to work "as partners"
against
sweatshops. With an incredulous wave at the coffee and cookies, Brunk
snapped,
"You try to make it all cozy here, but you just had police follow and
harass us
across the country!"
Nike won't back off. "It's just not in the culture here to retreat, or
to keep
your mouth shut," says war-room team member Amanda Tucker. Manager
says his
political polling and intelligence tell him the students are a
"marginal" group
who arouse little sympathy from peers or consumers. And he fully
expects further
clashes. As Manager escorted the protesters to the front gate, he
muttered,
almost to himself, "Well, I'm sure we'll be talking again. Just mix it
up."
) 2001 Newsweek, Inc.
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