There are so many things right about this video that looking at it from a distance is difficult.
- A Black owned basketball footwear company is highlighted. The sneaker in the video is by Q4 The Millennium Hi
- The father and son at the table is always a beautiful thing to witness because of the entirely wrong perception of the absentee Black father.
- A discussion on the importance of sneakers vs what you actually do in your life
- The fact that the kid is actually doing what I used to do… kind of. He’s cleaning his kicks. When I was young we were poor. When I got a pair of shoes I had to make those shoes last. Every kid in the neighborhood owned a bottle of white Kiwi polish. The one with the sponge top. It was almost a science in applying just the right amount because too much and your kicks looked horrible. Too little and you could see the worn leather through the polish. The fact that he’s cleaning his kicks instead of saying, “I have ten pair,” is a good thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=129&v=ER_EkstiVhg
Now with all of the good, what is actually happening with the marketing campaign tells a story I hadn’t even considered: The disruption of the shoe dog and the industry around repairing and maintaining sneakers. Sneaker culture removed the need for a shoe dog in your neighborhood who would put taps on your shoes or replace the heels of shoes. Sneaker culture has shifted footwear from Florshiems to Sneakers and in the process cobblers disappeared, but the multiple pairs of sneakers people have has removed a need for polish also.
Let’s get to the discussion on how the video is being promoted though. I discovered the video via a number of people on LinkedIn sharing it. That’s a good thing. That’s an organic discovery. Unfortunately the marketing people at Kiwi don’t really have any connection to the sneaker market which is the bigger issue. Kiwi allowed their business to be disrupted by brands that are featured on sneaker sites throughout sneaker culture:
Reshoevn8r
Jason Markk
Crep Protect
Footlocker also produced their own in-house cleaner named Mint.
I can continue, but the point is as sneaker culture came to dominate retail, Kiwi didn’t adapt. To be honest as a veteran I had tons of Kiwi products. When it comes to dress shoes a good can of polish goes a long way. Unfortunately when dress shoes are being replaced by business casual sneakers, that’s a disruption. The sneaker cleaning industry has a lot of competition now. This move by Kiwi underscores an issue with every industry. When companies fail to control the narrative around their product and create content they lose ground. Let’s go backwards a bit.
The post on LinkedIn was shared via Complex. Kiwi paid Complex to share the video via a paid post. If you take a moment to use the search feature on the Complex site you’ll find about 10 pages with 10 posts per page on Jason Markk. Crep has two pages and 10 listings per page. Reshoevn8r has about ten listings and Kiwi has about four that aren’t really about Kiwi. The marketing person for Kiwi chose what they thought was the safest, easiest play. Here is the thing though. The video was released April 30th. It only has 440 views. That’s not a good thing. Could it eventually go viral? Possibly, but the choice of Complex as a paid partner was not the best option by any means. As dope as Complex is, they are not a Black website and when you place Black people into the video it becomes a Black campaign. That’s a shitty and unfortunate truth and it shouldn’t matter, but it does.
There is opportunity there. Black people create trends and dictate style. That’s an oversimplification and can be argued of course. However, that video could resonate with Black Twitter, but it won’t because it’s too long. There are a lot of issues here with this campaign and I can continue to tear it apart and say what should be done, but this is my primary point: All industries, all businesses can be disrupted. The best way to prepare for it is to build diverse staffs who can offer a variety of ideas during the creation of marketing campaigns. Kiwi made a fantastic short film, and I typically am a fan of ads that don’t attempt to sell me anything, but there is an issue with Kiwi that can be summarized in these final sentences. Kiwi’s YouTube page where the brand has this video has 19 videos on it and the last video uploaded prior to this short film was 6 months ago. The oldest video is from 3 years ago. As a comparison in the last 2 weeks I’ve put up 20 videos. In the last year I’ve posted over 500 videos.
Kiwi did a good thing, but they are playing catch up.
