Broken Brand

In the early nineties, Shep Fairey asked the question “what does it mean when the medium has no message?”

He did (and still does) that from the ground-up. Ever heard of Andre the Giant? It appears Nike is running a similar experiment from the top-down.

For the past week I’ve been trying to use nikerunning.nike.com. The site is the clearinghouse for all the data collected from Nike+ products.

This is one of the worst user experiences I’ve ever had on a web site. And I’ve been on a lot of job boards.

These pages are heavy enough to make me consider abandoning Nike+ altogether (I was already hesitant using a Nike product).

When is Nike going to realize that there’s more to a business than it’s brand? You actually have to cover your fundamentals first and make a good product. The brand is worthless if one ignores one’s core competencies.