Page 179 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

168 • Sport, Media and Society

The vulnerability of athletes’ bodies can also lead to crisis. Manchester United
football player Wayne Rooney broke his right foot during a match while wearing
Nike’s Air Zoom Total 90 Supremacy soccer boots (cleats). The incident prompted
speculation about the design and safety of the footwear. Another Manchester
United player, Gary Neville, caused public relations problems for Nike when he

claimed that the company was commercially benefitting from football’s antiracism
initiatives with their ‘Stand Up, Speak Up’ campaign in 2005 (‘Nike Just Doing
It’ 2005).

Brandscaping: NikeTown and Retail Entertainment

Branding has become a three-dimensional experience. Architects have attempted to
capture the spirit of the brand in the fabric of buildings. The process of shaping ar-
chitecture and interior design to become ‘primary instruments of customer-oriented
brand communication’ has been termed ‘brandscaping’ (Riewoldt 2002: 7). Brand-
scaping aims to deliver ‘backdrops for experiences with a high entertainment value,

from flagship stores to corporate theme parks, from customized modular shop sys-
tems to innovative mall concepts’ (Riewoldt 2002: 7). Riewoldt (2002) argued that
the age of information technology has, paradoxically, made physical locations more
important because they can do something that virtual brand experiences cannot—
stage and enact concrete encounters in real places.
Brandscaping creates affective brand experiences: ‘we can experience the mani-
festation, the messages and the emotions of the brand in company with the prod-
ucts themselves, in unadulterated, unusual and unique style’ (Riewoldt 2002: 8).
By creating a flagship store, the brand is given its own location on the tourist map.

It becomes an attraction in its own right. This was the marketing philosophy behind
Nike’s placement of NikeTown stores at the centre of cities like New York, Hono-
lulu and London. The former Global Creative Director for Nike Brand Design, John
Hoke (2002: 103), argued that the Nike brand experience is based on ‘brand seeding’
or ‘sowing the seed of a memory in your customer’s mind, so that you can draw on
that memory again—“harvest” it—weeks, months or even decades later’. Accord-
ing to Hoke, NikeTown stores are successful in getting customers to keep coming
back because the space is constantly changing, offering new products, messages and
meanings (Hoke 2002).
The multimedia-saturated experiences offered by NikeTown borrowed heavily on
the entertainment industry, ‘the Broadway stages in New York City, the cineplexes’
(Hoke 2002: 108). Hoke argued that consumers want the retail experience to provide
an escape from everyday life: ‘they want to react very strongly, both physically and
emotionally’ (Hoke 2002: 108). Retail entertainment aims to create a fascination
with the brand, ‘to get the customer to identify with the world of the brand, creating a
brand awareness and providing it with a deep-set emotional anchor’ (Riewoldt 2002:
10). Designers of the London NikeTown aimed to create an experience refl ective of