'Amplified, and used against you': Nike sat out the viral Maduro moment. That's the point

"There was a time when a brand would have seized on that kind of accidental heat. A knowing post, a wink to the internet, something engineered to keep the joke going one more cycle. Instead, there was nothing. Silence from the brand that built an empire on exhortations to just do it - and in this case, very deliberately didn't."

"The first reason is structural: internet culture now moves faster that corporate systems can react, TikTok trends flare and burn in days. Memes mutate in hours. Meanwhile, large brands still operate through layered approval chains, legal review and brand safety governance that can stretch even reactive posts into multi-day processes. By the time a post is cleared, the moment has usually moved on - or worse, inverted itself."

An image of Venezuela's deposed president Nicolas Maduro in a Nike tracksuit became a viral moment, yet Nike offered no public response. Brands historically would have amplified such accidental attention with playful posts, but Nike remained silent. Nike's reputation for owning cultural moments did not apply because the image was politically charged with global implications, and choosing silence showed that cultural fluency can include restraint. Internet culture now moves faster than corporate approval systems, allowing memes to mutate within hours while corporate reviews take days. Online platforms can quickly transform humor into controversy, increasing reputational risk. Marketers increasingly favor strategic restraint over fleeting attention.

Read at Digiday