I don’t know a lot about sports. But I know a lot about Nutella. Nutella is a yummy hazelnut and chocolate spread.
It has been available in Europe since World War II but has only started making appearances at inferior mid-American grocery stores in the last few years. This stuff is amazing. It is great on bread, with fruit or served in my personal favorite way — licked off your fingers while drunk at 3 a.m.
Nutella is vastly superior to peanut butter. The Department of Homeland Security might start investigating me for that statement, but it’s true. Try it. You’ll see.
Like most yummy snack products, Nutella has an advertising budget. I don’t think they have commercials or anything because the money was blown on a very expensive basketball sponsorship.
On every jar of Nutella is a picture of Kobe Bryant. In one hand, Bryant holds a Nutella-smothered piece of bread. In the other hand, Bryant brandishes an oversized basketball bearing the words, “Try Kobe’s Favorite!”
Nutella is small time in Bryant’s massive empire of endorsements. McDonalds satisfies his hunger. Nike keeps his feet warm. Sprite quenches his thirst. Nintendo keeps him from getting too bored on those grueling multi-state basketball commutes. In the game of endorsements (which is far more profitable than the game of basketball), Kobe Bryant is in the league of Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.
In light of the recent rape allegations against Bryant, his sponsors quietly are separating themselves from the scandal, waiting for the right time to make their next move — the move that likely will sever their ties with Kobe Bryant.
Cowardly, cowardly corporations! Don’t you remember how you got to be on top in the first place? By taking risks, that’s how. I’ve got some ideas that are worth the gamble. You can send me the check later.
A Nike commercial opens with an innocent looking woman running from a team of basketball players (a team made up of whites and blacks, thank you — if diversity is worth any price, maybe Yao Ming wants in). She runs into a dead end. Just as the players have her cornered, she bounds over a wall and escapes. She was wearing the new Kobe sneaker.
A thin woman gorges herself on McDonalds food until she becomes obscenely fat. Then nobody wants to rape her.
Nutella has the easiest job of all. They don’t even have to change the packaging. They just have to find a way to fit a barely-legal cheerleader into the Nutella jar. Then everyone really can try Kobe’s favorite.
Yes, that is offensive, but less so than exploiting a workforce of starving third world children to make shoes, or targeting your advertising to impressionable kids who don’t know that your product is unhealthy and potentially addictive. People talk of the rape allegations as deadly to Bryant’s image. Why was Nike’s image unaffected when a Vietnamese sweatshop worker accused her supervisor of rape? Was it because she wasn’t a rich white cheerleader?
The media frenzy surrounding the rape allegation has nothing to do with justice. It’s about maximizing ratings and feeding the American appetite for celebrity scandal over real news. Whether Bryant is guilty or innocent, America and its media are guilty of celebrity obsession, hypocrisy and self-imposed ignorance.
