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Your favorite Nike ad during the NBA playoffs was not made by Nike 😅 it was made by @asherhyde @cole @houseofgraphiks or a bunch of others by the day. Most suck, but these are getting pretty dang good.
Idk what Nike can do other than to hire these creators in or start aggressively guarding their trademark. Maybe they get the benefit of good ones, but they also had major blow back to ones created in concept with the swoosh scars on a black man’s back. This goes both ways & is a tough problem to tackle. What should Nike do?
Transcript
Hate to tell you, but this playoff season, your favorite Nike ad is not made by Nike. It's made by a young creative with AI and Photoshop and no trademark or intellectual property laws that they have to work around. Right now, Nike is being praised for this incredible wimby spot that they did not create. Asher Hyde is 20 years old and is armed with AI and Photoshop and whatever reference imagery. And sure, does it have, like, imperfections in it? Like, Shay's little baby arms here or the playoff verbiage that's off tier. Yeah. But not to the degree that all the sports graphic designers of yesterday would claim. The average person spends one and a half seconds looking at every worst, and as they're flipping through, they're just looking for the vibe and whatnot. They're not nitpicking every tiny little zoom in. And I gotta say, most spec ads look trash to me as somebody who best ten years in brand marketing at Nike, but this one is sick. Cole and many others have been making Momma Day tributes that look insanely real, like Caitlin Clark's image tier, the fever image there. And it's a very fine line between concept and inspiration and basically trademark theft. People have asked me what Nike thinks. I would tell you having been on the inside tier, it's just annoying really to see people be able to make these incredible images without having any trademark, no legal stuff, no IP. Because your traditional companies are generally gonna have to get those players together or shoot them and Photoshop them in. And they would have to pay for that friend's trademark. Or they would have to get approval from Jordan to put his jersey alongside LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. Something that spec ads never have to do. Or they will just have to start spitting out creative at a much higher rate. Either way, this one's pretty sick.
