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The Rose That Grew From Madison Avenue: Adidas, Powerade and the Marketing of Derrick Rose

Posted on December 23, 2015     Leave a Comment

…late-capitalist economic practices…led to deindustrialization and the decline of black urban communities in the post-World War II United States [and] also produced the black basketball star as a commodity and an object of desire for mass consumption…  (Gitanja Maharaj:1997, 98).

The Coca-Cola owned sports drink brand Powerade’s 2015 advertising campaign centers around the duel taglines “Just a Kid” and “We are All Just a Kid from Somewhere.” The ads feature a range of professional athletes. Among the athletes featured are; football player Jimmy Graham, “just a kid from Goldsboro,” hockey player Steve Stamkos, “just a kid from Ontario,” and baseball player David Ortiz, as “just a kid from Santo Domingo.” NBA player Derrick Rose is featured in a television commercial which began airing in February. The Rose commercial is entitled “Rose from concrete,” and bills him as “just a kid from Chicago.”

The majority of the athletes featured in the commercials play for American professional sports leagues. The campaign plays upon the notion of the “American Dream,” the mythical belief that in the United States, anyone can start from humble beginnings and attain wealth and possibly fame. The Rose commercial also plays upon the core false narratives and stereotypes that have come to be linked with African-American NBA players. Among them:

1. the players mainly emerge from poor black urban communities (i.e., from Akron, Ohio, and Carmelo Anthony from Baltimore, Maryland, the now retired Allen Iverson from Hampton, Virginia)
2. the majority are the products of ‘broken homes’ made up of single mothers and absent fathers
3. through sheer talent, hard work and personal resolve alone they overcome poverty

The 60-second Rose Powerade commercial uses the voice of the late rapper Tupac Shakur, reciting a stanza from Shakur’s poem “The Rose that grew from the concrete.” The commercial opens with a young actor portraying young Derrick Rose in his bedroom in Chicago. Young Derrick will symbolically journey on his bicycle from the impoverished South Side of Chicago neighborhood of Englewood, fueled by Powerade, to NBA stardom. The choice of Tupac Shakur’s “Rose that grew from concrete,” of course is a play on Derrick’s last name. The choice of Shakur is also connected to the Hip-Hop cultural cachet attached to Shakur, who died at the age of 25.  Shakur is now a cultural icon, he represents rebellion, black cool, and a particular brand of black hyper-masculinity. The commercial uses the last stanza of the recorded version of Shakur’s poem:

You see you wouldn’t ask why the rose that grew from the concrete

had damaged petals. On the contrary, we would all celebrate its

tenacity. We would all love it’s will to reach the sun.

Well, we are the rose – this is the concrete – and these are

my damaged petals. Don’t ask me why, thank God nigga, ask me how!

The commercial omits the line “thank God nigga.” A shorter version of this poem appears in Shakur’s posthumous collection of poetry, entitled The Rose that grew From Concrete, published in 1999. The version of the poem that appears in the book consists of eight lines and does not include the stanza that Shakur is heard reciting in the commercial. The book offers a photocopy of Shakur’s handwritten version of the poem, where Shakur identifies the poem as “Autobiographical.”

A biography of Derrick Rose is what the Powerade commercial purports to offer. Derrick Rose was born in 1988, Shakur was born in 1971 and died in 1996. Rose was eight years old when Shakur died. The commercial attempts to construct a link between Shakur, who has been deceased for nearly 20 years and the 27-year-old Rose. In the video documenting the making of the commercial Rose states, “I loved Pac for what he stood for, he stood for something more than music, he knew where he was at in this life, he knew where he wanted to go.” Rose never shares what exactly he believes Shakur stood for. It is clear that the association with Shakur is something that is desired by Rose. The fictionalized biography of Rose that the commercial offers, is really a corporate construct of black masculinity. It is a false narrative which depends on an essentialized, simplistic concept of black manhood in urban America.

The corporate co-option of Hip-Hop is highly visible in sports related marketing. Hip-Hop music has emerged from the South Bronx of the 1970s to become a global commodity of the 21st century, utilized by Madison Ave advertising firms to hawk everything from hamburgers to automobiles. The Rose Powerade commercial was crafted by the Portland, Oregon based, global advertising agency, Wieden + Kennedy. The agency has offices in New York and Brazil as well as other major cities. On the Wieden + Kennedy website, the agency describes the idea behind the Rose ad as, “[no] matter where athletes get their start, or what obstacles they face in life, through hard work and determination, they can advance from the very bottom to the very top.”

While Madison Ave, like the NBA, once shunned Hip-Hop, it has now engaged in a corporate embrace of Hip-Hop music and many of its cultural elements. Sociologist Celia Lury writes that “Nike makes extensive use of the marketing technique of personification, in which the properties of a product…are associated with the characteristics of a person” (2004, Loc 2075). It can be argued that companies such as Nike, Adidas and in this case Powerade, are making use of the now common marketing technique of Hip-Hop personification. In this process the identified elements of Hip-Hop culture—blackness, urbanity, youth, authenticity, hyper-masculinity—that are imagined to be embodied in the black athlete are transferred from the athlete to the product being advertised. The Rose Powerade commercial attempts to use this technique of Hip-Hop personification, however, Rose may not necessarily be perceived to embody all these Hip-Hop related elements. Shakur also serves the purpose in the commercial of helping to enhance Rose’s Hip-Hop authenticity.

The commercial offers a “single story” (Adichie: 2013), narrative of the contemporary black male experience in urban America. This single story approach to the black male urban experience features an archetypal black male athletic hero. This archetypal black male athletic hero’s story always begins in an urban impoverished black metropolis. In the case of Derrick Rose, it is the South Side Chicago neighborhood of Englewood. Through the gift of this archetypal black male athletic hero’s talent, his work ethic, his resistance to the temptations of the ‘Hood,’ gangs and drug dealing, he is able to escape the ‘urban ghetto.’ It is not government social programs that allow his escape from poverty and his dire community. According to the scripted advertising narrative, it is solely through the athlete’s own tenacity and effort that he rises from the imagined ghetto. The Rose Powerade commercial follows the script quite closely, depicting Rose as the archetypal black athletic hero, rising from Chicago’s impoverished South Side. In addition to his own tenacity, young Rose, starts out with a bottle of Powerade which is stored in his backpack as he rides on his bicycle through a neighborhood where multiple visual cues of urban decay are displayed.

The commercial opens with the young Rose in his small bedroom which has a twin bed with no headboard or footboard. Clothes are strewn about. He walks into the kitchen, where a woman, presumably his mother, is taking care of a basket full of laundry. We never see this woman’s face. There is no father present. Young Rose places a bottle of Powerade in his backpack and he departs on his bicycle. No neighborhood friends join Rose on this journey through the South Side of Chicago. The neighborhood scenery presented is that of the type of urban decay which is often depicted in music videos and films set in the inner city. Rose rides on streets with cracked asphalt, we see broken fences and garbage strewn about. Young Rose stops in the middle of the street and looks back at his impoverished neighborhood, and then he continues his solitary journey towards fame and fortune.

In the next visual, young Rose finds himself standing outside of the United Center Arena, the home arena of Chicago Bulls, the team for which Rose plays. He starts walking towards the arena. The scene dissolves into the adult Derek Rose, who is now inside the arena walking onto court. Rose is wearing a jacket, with the Adidas logo on his upper sleeve. His own Derrick Rose logo which incorporates the letter D placed in the center on an outline of a rose is on the front of his jacket. According to Forbes magazine “Each leaf of the rose on the…logo represents Rose in a unique way. The three leaves, or rose pedals, represent each of his older brothers. The No. 1 in the middle not only signifies his jersey number, but also his mother.” The Rose logo was crafted by Adidas and appears on Rose’s signature Adidas shoe collection. The logo design and the Powerade commercial aim for authenticity and intimacy by purporting to offer the consumer not just a product, but a personal piece of Derrick Rose.

In 2011, Rose was named the league MVP, the youngest ever, and his team the Chicago Bulls made it to the NBA Eastern Conference finals where they faced LeBron James and the Miami Heat. In 2012, Adidas signed Derrick Rose to a 13-year, $185 million endorsement deal. In Rose, Adidas thought they had found the superstar athlete who could help them steal some market share from Nike. Rose’s appeal was not merely his athletic talent and performance on the basketball court, but also his back story. Rose’s story of being from the South Side of Chicago neighborhood of Englewood, which has been described as being “one of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods,” and being raised by a single mother, also made him appealing. Adidas certainly hoped that Rose could do for them what a former Chicago Bulls player, Michael Jordan, had done for Nike, in terms of increasing the sales of Adidas sneakers.

With his endorsement deals with companies such as Adidas, Giordana’s pizza chain and the Coca-Cola owned Powerade, Derrick Rose has become a “commodity and an object…for mass consumption,” (Maharaj: 1997). Rose has sustained a range of devastating injuries over the last three years. These injuries have stymied Rose’s career. Rose has missed more games than he has played, in the last three years. A successful ingredient for the marketability of NBA athletes from Michael Jordan to Kobe Bryant and to LeBron James, has been winning. Each of these three players has won at least two NBA championships. Since 2011, Rose and the Chicago Bulls have not even made it to the Eastern Conference finals. Rose is a full participant in the process of making him into a commodity, as evidenced by the creation of his own logo, which is not just meant to sell more sneakers, but in the larger context to build and further promote the Derrick Rose brand.

The Powerade commercial is unable to completely suppress Shakur’s intended meaning from his words and voice. Shakur’s poetic intentions subtly shadows the commercial. We hear Shakur’s voice reciting:

You see you wouldn’t ask why the rose that grew from the concrete

had damaged petals. On the contrary, we would all celebrate its

tenacity. We would all love it’s will to reach the sun.

Well, we are the rose – this is the concrete – and these are

my damaged petals. Don’t ask me why,… ask me how!

The commercial promotes a narrative of personal responsibility, where institutionalized racism, deindustrialization, mass incarceration and welfare reform, poor public schools, all of  which form and impact neighborhoods like Englewood, Chicago, are ignored.  Shakur’s poem is about how he and other young black men responded to the conditions of urban poverty and racism by turning to gangs, drug dealing, and in Shakur’s case rapping. Rather than being celebrated for finding some means of surviving under these harsh economic and social conditions, these young men are instead labeled as thugs. Shakur famously had the words Thug Life tattooed on his abdomen. The “concrete” can be interpreted as a metaphor for crime-ridden, poor, urban communities like Englewood, Chicago. The “roses” can be interpreted as a symbol of  the youth who inhabit these neighborhoods. The “damaged petals” could be perceived as the likely psychological scars that the youth of these neighborhoods have obtained from suffering from years of economic and violent trauma, and generational poverty.

The Rose Powerade commercial offers a corporate fairy tale, in which, athletes at least, can escape places like Englewood, Chicago and their blight, through personal effort alone. As the advertising agency states “[n]o matter where athletes get their start, or what obstacles they face in life, through hard work and determination, they can advance from the very bottom to the very top.” It is very telling that in the commercial, Rose rides out of the neighborhood alone. While he may have escaped the violence and poverty of Englewood, Chicago, thousands of other black youth remain in that neighborhood, without extraordinary athletic ability to serve as their ticket out.

Lury, Celia. Brands: The logos of the global economy. London: Routledge, 2004. Kindle

Maharaj, Gitanjali. “Talking Trash: Late Capitalism, Black (Re) Productivity, and Professional Basketball.” Social Text No. 50 (Spring 1997): 97-110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/466817. Accessed January 4, 2015.

THE ULTIMATE TROPHY: What the Phenomenon of Sports WAGS tells us about Sexism, Race and Beauty

Posted on August 18, 2014     Leave a Comment

“In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.”                            -Tony Montana (Scarface)

WAGS (Wives and Girlfriends) is an acronym coined by the British tabloids to refer to the wives and girlfriends of British soccer players. WAGS has now been expanded to refer to the wives and girlfriends of male athletes in all major sports. Viewing the featured images of athlete’s significant others in British tabloids, Vogue Magazine which put together “WAGs “R” Us: A Style Guide to World Cup Soccer Wives and Girlfriends,” this recent listing by the New York Daily News “The hottest WAGs of the World Cup” and a website’s list of “The 11 Most Desired Wags of Mexican Soccer,” leads you to believe that every soccer player is either married to a Sports Illustrated model, Victoria’s Secret model, playboy playmate, or pop singer, actress who coincidentally is 99% likely to be white. Of the over 50 soccer player’s wives and girlfriends that the Daily News showcased, only four appear to be black. Of the 12 women selected by Vogue only two were non-white, Japanese player Misako Honda’s wife Keisuke Honda, and Inter Milan player Mario Ballotelli’s girlfriend Fanny Neguesha who is of African descent.  According to a 2012 article in the British newspaper The Guardian “25% of premiership players are black or from ethnic minorities.”   There are significant numbers of black players or players of African ancestry playing in the soccer clubs of Europe. Here in the United States 78% of NBA players are African-American and about 68% of NFL players are black, now even if only half of these players were married to or dating a black woman, that is a significant pool of black WAGS for the media to showcase. However, one rarely sees the black wives of professional athletes showcased in the non-black media, with few exceptions. Actress Gabrielle Union who is engaged to Miami Heat Player Dwayne Wade is among the few exceptions.

These WAG lists tend to remind me of the Robert Palmer music video “Addicted to Love,” from the mid-1980s, where make-up and clothing was utilized to make the multiple women standing behind Palmer resemble clones of each other. The WAG lists and the Palmer video both reduce women to one-dimensional sexual objects, whose sole purpose is to be desirable and appealing to men. These lists also serve to support the notion that there is a singular form of acceptable female beauty; white and thin. After Tiger Woods had his public adultery scandal, Elin Nordgren after divorcing Woods was featured on the cover of People Magazine. I wondered if Elin had not been an attractive Swedish blonde would she have been on the cover of People Magazine, no matter how high-profile her now ex-husband was. What if Woods’ wife had been Thai like his mother or African-American like his father and his serial adultery was revealed in the same fashion would his Thai or black wife have been a People Magazine cover story?

Historically, societies everywhere have always tried to direct women’s aspirations towards marriage and snagging some version of prince charming. If Joan of Arc had visions of marrying the guy who would save France; rather than ambitiously saving France herself, she would not have been burned at the stake. From fairy tales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty to modern Hollywood films like Pretty Woman, the myth of the happy ever has been packaged and sold to girls and women; all you need to do is find Mr. Right/ Prince Charming and all will be right with the world. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman had to be beautiful in order to be blessed with the attention of Prince Charming or in the case of Ms. Roberts character the attention of a millionaire. These WAG lists are modern versions of fairy tales, instead of princes of the realm, we have star quarterbacks, midfielders and point guards and instead of sleeping beauties we have fashion models, Playboy models and reality stars.

A beautiful woman is the ultimate trophy for a man who has achieved what society defines as success; rock star (see Tommy Lee), NFL quarterback (see Tom Brady and Giselle), billionaire (see Francois-Henri Pinault and Selma Hayek) or movie star (see George Clooney).  Interestingly enough Clooney after dating countless models is set to marry a multilingual human rights lawyer. We have been conditioned to believe that beauty is a woman’s greatest asset; this is why Kim Kardishian and her predecessors like Zsa Zsa Gabor were able to become famous for being famous. Modeling is one of the few professions where women out-earned men by a wide margin. Giselle, the supermodel wife of Tom Brady has been estimated to make as much as $42 million dollars a year.

As an avid tennis fan, I can be guaranteed that whenever I am watching the Wimbledon tennis championship and Andy Murray is playing that I will be provided with multiple camera shots of his very attractive girlfriend Kim Sears. If the New England Patriots are playing, Tom Brady’s wife Giselle will definitely earn some camera time. The NFL just drafted its first openly gay player Michael Sam; I look forward to the start of the NFL season to see if during St. Louis Rams games to see if Sam’s boyfriend Vito Cammisano will be getting as much camera time as Giselle.

Secondly, if I may paraphrase George Orwell, All WAGS are equal, but some WAGS are more equal than others, it is clearer that there is a specific racial and aesthetic preference when it comes to the wives and girlfriends  of professional athletes that the media showcases. During the World Cup, profiles of the wives of the players on the West African teams were conspicuously absent. When I searched the internet for images of the wives of African soccer players I was able to find multiple African-based websites that profiled these women such as kamerstories.com. However, outside of such African websites or black blogs one rarely gets to see black wives and romantic partners of professional black athletes. We get to see the romantic partners of African-American, Afro-European and Afro-Latino men only when those women are white or of some other non-black ethnicity.

I am disturbed by the media driven phenomenon of  WAGS, first and foremost it objectifies women.  Historian Maria Aparecida da Silva states  “In a sexist society, women are seen as an object of consumption…and consumer goods confer status and power to whoever acquires them,” . The WAG phenomenon reduces women to objects whose sole value lies in their physical attributes. In order for those physical attributes to be considered valuable they have to meet the strict qualifications that have been set for female beauty, whiteness or near whiteness, thinness, long straight and hyper traditional femininity. It is very telling that so many publications can find editorial space to feature athletes’ girlfriends but cannot find editorial space to feature female athletes.

Just as magazines and television programs love to showcase the material possessions of wealthy athletes, high end cars, jewelry and mansions, they also love to showcase the women these athletes are dating. The women become objects just like the cars; after all, just like Tony Montana preached in the film Scarface, once you have the money and power, you get the women. The dangers of cultivating a culture in which women are seen merely as objects, was brought to our attention in the extreme case of Elliot Rodgers, the California college student who went on a killing spree stating “All of those beautiful girls I’ve desired so much in my life, but can never have because they despise and loathe me, I will destroy.“

All forms of objectification of women have negative consequences in our societies, mass murder is obviously not the typical response. What is common is the negative impact on the self-esteem of girls and women. It teaches men that women are objects that they are entitled to, and failure to acquire a beautiful woman is failure as a man. It is part of the whole consumption, celebrity driven culture that constantly tells us that the bar for our professional and personal lives should be like the lives of professional athletes, movie stars, pop stars and wealthy CEOs. This is something that is unattainable for 99% percent of the human population. People who receive and absorb this message spend their money to acquire products and to undergo surgical procedures to try to achieve this impossible goal. I know that I am not one right shade of of L’Oréal lipstick or nose job away from looking like Giselle and furthermore I have no desire to do so, and no woman should waste her time on such a quixotic pursuit.