Air and the professional sport of marketing
Chris Vognar
I was 15 when I got my first pair of Jordans in 1986. I didn’t play any kind of organized ball, though I liked to mess around on the playground. They just looked really cool. Red and black high tops? Sign me up. At least as important, posters of His Airness dotted my bedroom walls alongside my heavy metal heroes. Getting the sneakers was just the logical next step. Or, as Spike Lee’s Mars Blackmon put it in the Nike commercials of the time, it’s gotta be the shoes.
I didn’t know it then, but I was buying into the great sports marketing mammon.
TWO WAYS THE MARKETING TAIL WAGS THE PRODUCT DOG
All of this came back to me with the force of a tomahawk dunk as I watched Air, the new Ben Affleck/Matt Damon movie about how Nike pursued and eventually signed an incoming rookie named Michael Jordan to rescue its beleaguered basketball shoe division. (Spoiler: It worked). The savviest move Jordan ever made wasn’t on the court. It was insisting on a share of the profits from Jordan apparel, an unprecedented near-deal breaker. He’s now worth $2 billion.
Leading the charge for the then-underdog company from the Pacific Northwest is one Sonny Vaccaro (Damon), a pudgy, middle-aged hoops savant and marketing executive who had already made a name as an organizer of amateur basketball tournaments. Nike was small potatoes in the basketball market back in the early ‘80s, a distant third to Converse, whose clients included Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, both of whom starred in some of the period’s classic TV ads, and Adidas, with its simple three-stripe design and fancy sweatsuits.
It’s a curious concept for a movie, but for the most part, it works. Affleck, who directs and plays Nike CEO Phil Knight as a swaggering collection of socially awkward tics, always meshes with Damon on screen (Good Will Hunting has aged quite well). The dialogue, written by Alex Convery, has a breezy flow, like Aaron Sorkin in a rare relaxed mood. Viola Davis swooshes in as Jordan’s mother, Deloris, the primary gatekeeper to her son’s ear. Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, and Marlon Wayans all do strong work as major players in the fateful game of salesmanship. Meanwhile, hoops heads can delight in the bandying about of names big (Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Moses Malone) and not quite forgotten (Melvin Turpin, Vern Fleming, and Sam Bowie, the injury-prone big man selected No. 1 in the 1984 NBA draft, ahead of Jordan, by the Portland Trailblazers, who were already stocked in the backcourt. Oops).
But there’s a bigger story embedded in all of this, one that Air manages to highlight without digging too deep into its greater implications. Nike ultimately sold Jordan by making sure he knew the product was all about him. It named the shoe after him, decades before every Tom, Dick, and Harry with an All-NBA credit to his name could claim a signature sneaker line. It marketed him, not just the apparel. It created the illusion that when you slip on a pair of Air Jordans, you were trying on a piece of him. Hell, I bought it, and them. A few years later, Gatorade would make the message explicit: If you drink this stuff, you can be like Mike, even if you’ll never have his bank account.
Nike’s Jordan signing helped create the cult of personality that defines sports marketing today. And it pushed Nike, and Vaccaro, into a new stratosphere. When Vaccaro started working for Nike in the late ‘70s, the company’s annual sales were about $150 million. In its first year on the market, sales for the Air Jordan line alone were $100 million — chicken feed compared to the sums that have flowed since.
There is much more to the story of Vaccaro and what he wrought by signing a rookie to a then-princely $250,000 contract (plus those profits). For starters, he looks and speaks nothing like the man Damon plays as a stoic go-getter. Vaccaro, now 84, is a highly expressive Italian American whose vision shaped the economic culture of amateur basketball. Vaccaro pioneered the practice of gifting gear to high school and AAU teams in hopes of steering stars toward his employer — shady, to some extent, but all perfectly legal. He founded the ABCD Basketball Camp, a summer showcase for prep stars including LeBron James and br Bryant, and a recruiting ground — some would say meat market — for those same college coaches getting fat on sneaker money. He’s also the man most responsible for the idea of paying college coaches to outfit (and shoe) their players in whatever brand pays the best.
And Vaccaro’s influence has changed the pro game. He was a key behind-the-scenes player in the Lakers’ seismic acquisition of Bryant out of high school in 1996. (In 2005, the NBA closed this loophole by requiring all rookies to have at least one year out of high school before entering the league, creating the parade, or charade, of prep stars playing a single year in college.) After he left Nike, he went to Adidas, where he signed Bryant, and then Reebok.
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All of this is covered in the incisive (and fair-minded) 2015 ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Sole Man. So is Vaccaro’s role in aiding former University of California, Los Angeles, star Ed O’Bannon’s successful antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA, which challenged the college sports regulating organization’s use of the images and likeness of former student-athletes for commercial purposes. Say what you will about Vaccaro. He believes in people getting paid for their abilities.
In short, Vaccaro’s starring role in the Jordan/Nike saga might be one of the least interesting things about the guy, even if it makes for an entertaining film. Yes, this movie about a shoe deal is a lot of fun, and its existence shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Apple TV+ is currently streaming Tetris, a movie about how a blocky video game came to market. There is drama to be found in such matters — and comedy, too. As for box-office prospects, I wasn’t the only one to buy a pair of Jordans in the ‘80s. Jordan’s name could sell then, and it’s safe to say this story will go on generating green to go with the black and red.
Chris Vognar is a culture writer living in Houston.