![]() Lucky for Air Raid stans, the shoe retros with moderate frequency, and 2020 will be another great year for this fan favorite. via Nike via Nikeįast forward almost thirty years and the Air Raid is poised to return yet again. By telling every 10-40-year-old that the Air Raid was specifically designed for where they played, Nike effectively created a personalized connection between the shoes and consumers. Representation matters (it’s 2020, that shouldn’t be news) and the Air Raid represented the everyday hooper. So do you think the Air Force 1 or Delta Force couldn’t handle some asphalt? No way, those kicks are tanks! But that’s the genius of the Air Raid’s marketing – Nike successfully sold ice to Eskimos. Most basketball games growing up take place at parks, schoolyards, and backyards. When you think about it though… pre-1992 basketball shoes were totally capable of handling outdoor play. The Air Raid’s big “thing” was their ‘Outdoor Use Only’ construction, meaning, these kicks could withstand battles on the blacktop. One Man and His Shoes is in cinemas on 23 October and on digital formats on 26 October.Released by Nike in 1992, Tinker Hatfield’s Air Raid helped transform sneaker marketing. This is a heartbreaking story, but the film leaves it very late to tell it. ![]() Only over the final credits do we learn that no one at Nike or Team Jordan agreed to take part in the film. ![]() But the whole point of Air Jordans was that they were worn out on the street with no protection whatever. Automobiles can at least be locked and made traceable with registration plates, and TVs and VCRs can be hidden away in apartments. Nike was controlling the supply of Air Jordans as carefully as De Beers controlled the supply of diamonds, artificially assigning extreme value and desirability to the shoes. The brand was monetising a street culture created by the impoverished customer base. The point is – and it’s a point that the film could have made sooner – these shoes were being aggressively marketed to the kids who could least afford them. But then, kids started killing each other for their Air Jordans, and the $140 price tag doesn’t exactly explain it. From modest beginnings, Jordan became very rich indeed. ![]() Witty, quirky TV ads by Spike Lee took Air Jordan-mania to new levels of delirium. Nike made Jordan the branded figurehead of a new line of sneakers, the Air Jordans, which were initially banned by the NBA because of their colour scheme – and naturally only created an outlaw glamour. We see the glorious footage of his amazing prowess as Jordan almost seems to float through the air and even supernaturally pause in mid-flight before each shot. In the mid-80s, Michael Jordan broke through as a breathtakingly good basketball player with superstar power. But then, in its final act, the film appears to suggest that it might have got the tone wrong and this could actually be a story of something scandalous in which the athlete and his corporate sponsors are themselves complicit. Most of the time it is a celebratory account of how in the 80s and 90s a uniquely talented African American athlete became a legend, finding staggering wealth and success in America’s white-controlled worlds of sports, pop culture and commerce. This is a documentary that only seems to wake up to its own tragic significance once it is nearly all over.
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