SMB.

During this Olympic game, Nike allowed swimmers to wear the Speedo LZR Racer suit, but at leats three non-Speedo athletes have covered up Speedo´s logo.
Eric Wright of Joyce Julius & Associates said that "Usuallly they were throwing a piece of black tape over the logo". A replay of NBC´s broadcast of the 4x100 meter relay, Speedo´s logo can´t be seen on the suits worn by Nike-sponsored athletes Cullen Jones or Jason Lezak.
According to Wright, Speedo has lost 30 seconds of exposure in both the men's and women's competitions from the cover ups. "Which comes to $750,000 of value if you're comparing it to ad buys," he said.

Nike sent a letter to swimmers allowing them to wear the Speedo LZR Racer Suit during the Olympics. The statement tells that wearing the Speedo brand during the competition will not be seen as a compromise to their contract with the world's biggest shoe and apparel company.
The main reason behind this decision it´s due to technologic advantage that those suits offer, before been aproved by FINA (The international swimming governing body) it was considered technological doping.
Many national teams changed their swimmers sponsors because of LZR superiority, but Adidas is insisting that its home country Germany, which it has a $6.2 million contract with through 2009, wear their swimsuit despite outspoken comments from the team and their desire to go Speedo.
After LZR suit, Speedo sales are up to 9.3 percent and Nike´s are down 7 percent.

The NBA Draft was three weeks ago and two player still without a shoe contract, they are Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley.

During the summer league games, Rose wore Nike and Adidas. Beasley wore Jordans. But noe of the bands have confirmed that either of them have signed. According to Darren Rovell, Rose has an offer of $ 1 million a year and around $ 650,000 a year for Beasley.

Nike will drop three Hyperdunk ads from its basketball campaign that critics said it's homophobic. These ads evoke a 1992 rap song ("Punks jump up") with anti-gay lyrics.

Nike states that is "strongly opposed to discrimination of any kind and has a long history of supporting athletes regardless of their sexual orientation. The advertisement in question is based purely upon a common insight from within the game of basketball - the athletic feat of dunking on the opposition, and is not intended to be offensive.

However, after listening to concerns expressed around specific executions, we have decided to drop them from the campaign to underline our ongoing commitment to supporting diversity in sport and the workplace.

Nike has a strong record of support for diversity and is proud to have been honored with a 100 percent score over several consecutive years in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation¹s Corporate Equality Index."

Well, I think there's a little misunderstanding here, because Nike (a Giant in this biz) wouldn't waste money with homophobic ads, what do you think?

The Hyperfactory and McCann Erickson launched a mobile campaing to promote a new soccer shoe from Nike.
According to RCR Wireless, mobile advertising seems to be a good fit for athletic shoes.
The interactive campaing was launched in Hong Kong last month and was based 3-D images placed in its retail stores, subway stations and other high-traffic areas. A downloadble application allow users to point a camera to a T90 shoe and soccer ball as well as a location-specific code. Soccer fans were encouraged to interact and start a mobile scarvenger hunt.
Adidas and Puma also used launched innovative campaings. During Euro 2008, Puma offered team ringtones and chants that could be programmed to sound whenever the team scored, and provided free conference-calling for like-minded fans to discuss the action. As part of "Basketball is a Brotherhood" campaign, Adidas enticed mobile users to send a text message to receive recorded voice calls from the NBA stars.
Although mobile campaings are very atractive to young people, one thing must said! They must be planned as a hub (channel integrator) for other kinds of media to increase the interaction, brand awareness and creates value added experiences.