yo man, you seen the new air kunta kinte?

if you ever take an advertising class, there used be two marketing debockles they taught you about…

…big money spent on ad campaigns where they should have done some research and known their target audience a bit better than they did. you learn about them marketing the chevy nova in mexico, but not re-naming the car…and since “nova” in spanish sounds like “no va” which translates to “no run” or “doesn’t work” sales went…well…poorly.

and than there was the multi-billion dollar ad campaign done for the brazilian market in spanish. problem is, despite what most of white america believes, not ALL brown people speak spanish…some speak portuguese. like, oh, i dunno…brazilians? and while the two languages are similar they ARE different enough to where the ads didn’t translate well.

i think the ad exec in charge of that one now manages the jack n’ the box near my place.

now they can ad a third botched ad campaign to their list:

from what i read the concept was “are your kicks so hot that if you don’t lock ’em down somebody will steal them?” or something to that effect…the thing that caught my attention was the shoes aren’t THAT hot. in fact, they’re pretty fucking ugly. the n double a c-p went off because they resembled the leg irons that were put on slaves.

i’d like to take a moment to address a point – the NAACP is the first to jump on a bandwagon if anything seems degrading to black people. even if it’s just their perception that makes it so…but let’s keep in mind, the acronym “NAACP” stands for the “National Association for the Advancement of COLORED People” – but i DARE you to call one of them “colored”. try it. let me know how that goes for you. kinda ironic that the words in the title of their own organization are now seen as offensive by the very people they claim to be coming to the defense of, huh? i’m just sayin’…

…let’s move on.

so, needless to say, the shoe launch was scrapped before it even really happened. i’ll bet cash they’re re-launched sans shackles and end up in the outlets within six weeks. meanwhile, if you CAN get a hold of some of the shackled up versions, die-hard sneaker heads (which come in ALL colors) will plunk down big bucks to get the adidas that never was.

and that, my friends, is irony…just not LEG-iron-y.

damn, that last joke sucked…