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Besides His Career, ‘The Last Dance’ Highlighted Michael Jordan’s Shoe Line

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In his famous 1989 commercial pitching the NIKE NKE Air Jordan IV, Michael Jordan paired with Spike Lee in a memorable commercial where Lee’s Mars Blackmon character asks Jordan what makes him the best player in the world?

At the end of the 30-second spot, the phrase “It’s gotta be the shoes” is uttered by Lee’s character to explain the dominance of Jordan, whom up until that point had been in the NBA for five seasons and only reached the conference finals once.

Over the course of his career, Jordan promoted other brands, notably McDonald’s in his famous 1993 game of HORSE with Larry Bird but it was always NIKE that was the brand most closely associated with Jordan’s pitchman abilities.

Jordan has been back in the public eye of late due to the recently-completed 10-part documentary “The Last Dance” which focused on his last season with the Bulls in 1997-98 while also focusing on other aspects of his career. Among the other things touched upon is his association with NIKE, the Dream Team, his baseball career and his relationship with other stars, notably Isiah Thomas.

If you look closely, you can see a documentary filled with product placement of NIKE, which is what stood out to many, including Matt Voda, CEO of OptiMine Software, a firm who has conducted marketing analytics for many clients, including the NBA.

“I don’t know the backstory if it was always planned but it turned out to a surefire move,” Voda said in a phone interview. “It was a perfect storm for Nike. There’s absolutely no sports on TV. A massive spike in TV viewership and a great story and Nike did this brilliant thing with product placement in all the episodes. It was brilliant.”

The documentary drew record numbers each of the times it aired first-run episodes on two hour blocks from April 19 to May 17. It premiered to an audience of nearly 13.8 million viewers and last week’s finale averaged 5.6 viewers, making it the most watched ESPN documentary of all-time.

It featured key talking points such as the food poisoning Jordan said he got before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA finals from a bad pizza in Utah, Dennis Rodman’s presence on the last three championship teams and the splintering relationship between Phil Jackson and Jerry Krause.

Along the way came various NIKE references, notably one episode that showed Jordan wearing his original Air Jordan shoes in his final regular season appearance at Madison Square Garden as a Bull in March 1998. In that game he scored 42 points and according to game accounts from that day, Jordan was quoted as saying: “Some of the moves seemed to be coming from 1984.”

And recently those shoes were in the news for what they fetched at an auction.

Those shoes sold for $560,000 in an auction by Sotheby’s making them the most expensive sneakers ever sold and it appears bidding was fueled by episodes of the “Last Dance”.

The price was fueled by intense bidding that saw the price go up by $300,000 in a span of 20 minutes as bidders from multiple continents drove the price up.

In the last two episodes, Jordan wore a pair of shoe that are not even on the market yet. In episode seven, Jordan was wearing the Air Jordan One Centre Court shoes, a white shoe that is not released to the public but was released to influencer Edison Chen, who as of early Thursday afternoon had about 2.8 million Instagram followers.

“This one stood out because it sowed the shoe and now there is all this buzz about the center court shoe,” Voda said.

According to the website Nicekicks.com, Jordan was shown wearing over 20 versions of his Air Jordan in the highlight footage used in each episode. Footage also showed him wearing Converse in college at North Carolina and Scottie Pippen wearing his own line of NIKE shoes.

As for the lasting effect, Voda believes the impact will be longer than the normal time for shoes due to a lack of live sports and he also thinks the timing of the show – which was originally slated to premiere in June when the NBA finals normally occur – played a key role.

“This perfect storm for Nike it was a home run,” Voda said.

A home run that fueled even more interest in a product that already is the highest selling sneakers of all time.

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