BREAK TO BUILD

I love this commercial....

David vs. Goliath

So there has been some comments on this photo and let me see if you can catch it first.

If you notice, Mr. Dwight Howard who is standing 1st in line seems to be standing much different than the rest of his team mates.

Do you see it yet? Can you find the non-Nike Shoes....

Well, if you didn't know he is not signed under NIKE and it seems like either this was photoshoped by someone or they intentionally had to block the NIKE logo.

Chris Paul (Jordan), Dwyane Wade (Converse) and Carmelo Anthony (Jordan), but all those still fall under NIKE.

Everyone else is rocking NIKE, I can tell you that JASK had a similar experience about this with Lebron James for an Al Fatz aka (Ohio they call him Fat Al) video that he did last year. We were able to work with Kesha Mcleod & Rachel Johnson from Thomas Faison and they said that Lebron would rock one of our T-shirts possibly for an artist on his record label in Ohio, low and behold check out this youtube video and click through 4:38 and you'll see he's rocking the Jask "STRUGGLE" T-shirt:



But once they actually launch the video, notice that you only get a glimpse of the T-shirt around 3:57. When you have a multi-million dollar deal, you got trademarks and contracts that you have to abide with and sometimes even if you want to get a shine its a lot harder than you think, but you know what, we're still in the struggle and so is LBJ for his ring.

Do you guys remember this image? Well the image now has changed to the new logo due to Nike claiming that MIKE 23 label was copying Nike and Converse's trademarks in connection to all of you know Michael Jordan.





Scott Nelson is the owner of MIKE 23 and I ran into him in Feb.'05 out in MAGIC briefly and if you visit his site all he wantd to do was to pay tribute to the man who we brought the game to a higher level - Michael Jeffrey Jordan aka "Air Jordan".

Nelson is supposedly forced to disable any of his products that portray any logo/mark/design that infringes NIKE & Converse rights, which means he has to withdrawl all of those "infringing" products from the market and to disable MIKE23 immediately or at least take down any pages that refrence these logos/designs in reference to MJ.

Nelson is in no shape of trying to fight this giant but hope that there will be a resolution to all of this. He hopes that the corporate giant will reconsider since he has not damaged the company's brand, in fact has helped it indirectly but when it comes down to intellectual property there is a very fine line...and it comes down to the consumer if they can seperate his product vs. knockoffs that are being sold on the shelves.

I feel that this situation is similar to what happened to DJ Drama & Cannon last year down in Atlanta, GA when R.I.A.A. went after them. Here's the NY Times article.

Lets just hope that Scott and the folks at NIKE come down with some sort of resolution. More on the article here.

This "street culture" brought up by artists has always tried to connect to the consumer by re-interpreting pop culture and iconic logos/designs....(i.e. Andy Warhol to KAWS) Warhol has been doing this back in the 60's with Campbell's Soup Co. and Coke.

Re-appropriation of images for their subculture has gone on and on and will continue to draw controversy and debate about originality and legality whether its in music, art, or fashion.

I close this blog with one of my favorite quotes which summarizes Warhol's revolution in "pop art" which shows an ambiguity of perspective that cuts across nearly all of the artist's statements about their own work.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

– The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), 1975, ISBN 0-15-671720-4