The CSR Newsletters are a freely-available resource generated as a dynamic complement to the textbook, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation.

To sign-up to receive the CSR Newsletters regularly during the fall and spring academic semesters, e-mail author David Chandler at david.chandler@ucdenver.edu.

Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Strategic CSR - Wind turbines

The article in the url below deals with the issue of how to discard the detritus of the renewable energy sector. Specifically, it notes that there is a large amount of hardware that is required to produce wind energy, which is rapidly reaching the end of its lifespan – particularly the blades from the turbines that were installed in the early 2000s:

"By 2025, trade association WindEurope estimates that 25,000 metric tons of wind turbine blades will be phased out each year in Europe alone, equivalent to the weight of more than 6,000 Hummer SUVs."

Unfortunately, most of the blades that were installed in those early years are either not recyclable or just not recycled:

"Most wind turbine blades end up in landfills or are incinerated. … That footprint only stands to grow: Total installed wind capacity reached 906 gigawatts worldwide last year, more than quadruple 2010 levels, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, an industry group. An additional 600 gigawatts are expected by 2027."

Nonprofit groups like Canvus (an organization dedicated to bringing "communities, organizations, and artists together to reimagine spaces, inspire others, and share new experiences") are working to convert the blades into functional items:

"At first glance, the benches outside the Great Lakes Science Center in downtown Cleveland seem unremarkable. But a closer inspection shows that their droplet-shaped shells aren't made from wood or metal. A scan of the attached QR codes reveals even more: These benches used to be wind turbine blades. Painted by local artists and weighing in at about 500 pounds (230 kilograms) apiece, the benches were crafted by Rocky River, Ohio-based Canvus, which will install 10 more in the same location later this month. Altogether, the dozen benches reuse roughly a quarter of a single 150-foot (45-meter) wind turbine blade."

They have lots of other ideas, too:

"The team came up with 150 ideas for products to make out of turbine blades before settling on 11 – planters, picnic tables and benches – that could be produced at scale. It also assigned each product a pithy name: the 'deborah' bench, for example, offers shade protection and is also available as a swing; 'beacon,' meanwhile, can be a bench, planter or fountain."

The article in the second url below confirms that there is a lot of hardware out there (EVs, bikes, and scooters) that has been discarded as the market attempts to identify the ideal solutions to specific sustainability-related problems:

"China is now the world leader in clean cars, producing around 6 million EVs and plug-in hybrids last year, or almost one in every three new cars sold domestically. It accounts for 60% of the world's current electric fleet, and has the most extensive EV charging infrastructure on Earth – also built with government support. But that lightning-fast development also left behind plenty of casualties. Many of the ride-hailing companies that were early adopters of EVs have gone out of business. There are now around 100 Chinese electric-car makers, down from roughly 500 in 2019."

Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2023

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler6e 
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


Retired Wind Turbine Blades Live on as Park Benches and Picnic Tables
By Coco Liu
June 15, 2023
Bloomberg

China's Abandoned, Obsolete Electric Cars Are Piling Up in Cities
August 17, 2023
Bloomberg
 
Posted by David Chandler at 1:44 AM

Friday, April 28, 2023

Strategic CSR - Art

The article in the url below reports on the attempt by an artist, Ben Grosser, to use his work to critique the rise of Facebook, in general, and the role of Mark Zuckerberg in driving that change, in particular:

"When the history of the first decades of this century comes to be written, there will be few more telling artworks than Ben Grosser's film Order of Magnitude. In the 47 minute video, Grosser, a digital artist and professor of new media at the University of Illinois, has spliced together every public instance in which Mark Zuckerberg has talked of 'more' and 'bigger.' The resulting montage of interviews and presentations is a fast forward of the rapid growth of Facebook as, in the chief executive's mouth, thousands become millions then billions. It makes a mesmerising monologue, the story of our times."

By contrast, the equivalent video Grosser made of Zuckerberg saying things related to 'small' or 'decreasing in size' is much shorter:

"The film is part of a double act. Grosser has also spliced together all the moments he can find of Zuckerberg ever mentioning numbers diminishing or things getting smaller. This film runs for 30 seconds, though in a new version for his forthcoming exhibition at the Arebyte Gallery in London, he has slowed those seconds down so it also runs for 47 minutes."

Grosser (as "a teacher of art") uses this work as a foundation for more fundamental activism against the damaging effects of social media. A significant part of that work is trying to alter the perceptions of those who have grown up in an age of social media, which has affected their ability to evaluate its effects, objectively, as well as their notion of what art is:

"Grosser asks his students a question in their first seminar. 'Who here has deleted a social media post within 10 minutes of putting it up, because it didn't have the metric reaction they hoped for?' Every hand goes up. Then he says: 'Now imagine if any of the artists you admire from the past had paid attention to the first 10 minutes of reaction to their work and used that as a guide about whether to throw something away.' If you're going to have original, strange ideas, he suggests, the world might need time to adjust to them."

One interesting innovation he is trying seeks to alter perceptions around the value of each individual post:

"Grosser has been testing a platform that might help with that, too. Minus breaks all the rules of metric-obsessed media. It allows users only a finite number of posts: exactly 100 across a lifetime and there are no likes or follows. The only way you can interact with another poster is by replying. His beta testers have reported some anxieties, which sound a lot like the kind of anxieties that artists have always felt: 'They almost feel like there's so much weight on a post,' he says. 'It's like, 'I'm only going to get 100, what if I blow one on some bullshit?''"

Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2023

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler6e 
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


How artist Ben Grosser is cutting Mark Zuckerberg down to size
By Tim Adams
August 15, 2021
The Guardian
 
Posted by David Chandler at 12:07 AM

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Strategic CSR - Toilets

The article in the url below is interesting because it shows the power of architecture (and design, art, and public policy) to create cities that are more pleasing;

"Toilets are usually out of sight and out of mind, until nature calls. Yet it is this universality and daily use that make restrooms a lens for examining the relationship between our cities and lifestyles, with each one telling a story about a snapshot in time. One country where toilets are appreciated and openly discussed, however, is Japan, so much so that it inspired German filmmaker Wim Wenders to make a new movie about a collection of public restrooms in the Shibuya district of Tokyo."

What is so interesting about these toilets?

"The toilets examined in the film are part of The Tokyo Toilet art project, which employed 16 world-famous designers to revamp 17 public restrooms in the capital. The project's goal is to eliminate negative stereotypes about public toilets with innovative designs, modern equipment and careful upkeep, which at the same time evoke qualities such as cleanliness, meticulousness and quirkiness typically associated with Japan."

For more on the project and a list of all the toilet designs (with photos), see: https://tokyotoilet.jp/en/. The Japanese take their toilets seriously:

"In the bubble era of the 1980s, toilet maker Toto introduced the electronic Washlet, a refined version of an American-made bidet for hospital patients with hemorrhoids that the company had been importing. The Washlet is now almost synonymous with Japanese culture and is being exported all around the world, as more people come to desire the comfort and cleanliness of the product, particularly during Covid. Today, 80.3% of Japanese households contain a Washlet-type toilet, according to a Cabinet Office survey, and they are also ubiquitous in hotels, restaurants, department stores and even public restrooms like the Tokyo Toilet."

Photos of many of the toilets in the project are also displayed in the article, below.

Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e 
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


These Toilets in Japan Are About to Get Their Own Movie
By Max Zimmerman
May 26, 2022
Bloomberg Businessweek
 
Posted by David Chandler at 1:53 PM

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Strategic CSR - Democracy

The article in the url below is a fun story that, unfortunately, reflects how far democracy has fallen in the eyes of the public. Specifically, the article reports on a contest for children (aged 13-18 who live in the county) to create the design for the 'I voted' sticker in a county in New York state. The plan is that these stickers will be given to voters after they have voted in the next political election:

"Ashley Dittus, an election official in Ulster County, N.Y., vividly remembers her excitement when the first submission for this year's countywide youth 'I voted' sticker design contest appeared in her email this spring. The entry, from Hudson Rowan, 14, was an electric concoction of colors: a pink and purple and turquoise creature with a wild bloodshot stare, a toothy neon grin and spiderlike legs. To the right, scrawled in red letters: I VOTED. Ms. Dittus, the county's Democratic commissioner of elections, immediately printed out the design and started showing it to people in her office. Everyone's reaction was the same, she said: It made them smile."

It is easy to see why people like Hudson's design; it is also easy to see why people think it makes a statement about the current state of democracy in the West:


Hudson's revealing comment:

"'Politics right now in the world is all kinds of crazy, … and I feel like the creature that I drew kind of resembles the craziness of politics and the world right now.'"

While the contest was intended to raise civic awareness among children living in the NY county, the contest and Hudson's popular design have morphed into a much broader discussion about politics today. The trouble with such discussions, as they grow and evolve, however, is that they continue to spread the rot. I always used to think the same about Jon Stewart's Daily Show (and other satirical commentators). Although the observations he was making were accurate and insightful (and funny), by pointing them out he was also spreading awareness of how bad things have become. That is the difference, I think, between a critique (however accurate and insightful) and a proposed solution. The idea, I guess, is that, by identifying the scale of the problem, it shocks people into action. The trouble is that, if things have deteriorated beyond a certain point, the way out of the hole is such a challenge that people are more demoralized than motivated.

None of this is Hudson's fault, of course. He has just submitted a cool design to a contest that normally would not have attracted any attention:

"Since voting for the winning entry began in July, Hudson's entry has received more than 158,500 votes, out of the about 169,500 total votes cast — completely overtaking last year's roughly 2,200 votes. The county has a population of about 180,000 people and about 122,000 active registered voters, but the contest is not limited to county residents."

The key, of course, is what reaction does his comment on the state of our democracy elicit – we could certainly do with a functioning democracy, given the scale of the problems we face. More details on this story are in the article in the second url below.

Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e 
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


What Has 6 Legs, 2 Eyes and Over 158,000 Votes? An 'I Voted' Sticker
By Hurubie Meko
July 13, 2022
The New York Times
Late Edition – Final
A14

Why a 'spider crab' is crawling to the top of a US 'I voted' sticker contest
By Sam Levine
July 14, 2022
The Guardian

Posted by David Chandler at 11:11 AM

Thursday, February 17, 2022

Strategic CSR - Death penalty

Today's newsletter is a follow-up to one I sent in the Fall about an art project highlighting the final meals of death row inmates (see Strategic CSR – Obituaries):

"Six tacos, six glazed doughnuts and a Cherry Coke: That was the last meal of a man executed in Oklahoma in July 1999. Rendered in cobalt blue glaze on a white china plate the next year, it was the first in Julie Green's decades-long art project, 'The Last Supper,' which documented the final meals of death row prisoners around the country."

The link below is related, in that it is a series of photographs by a photographer who seeks to recreate the last meals (more visceral, I think, than an artistic representation or written description). The title of the series is "No Seconds":


To be clear, the photographer recreates the last meals (these are not photos of actual last meals). He has been described as a "food stylist," so his shoots involve food he manipulates for artistic effect. This approach, of course, introduces the artist's interpretation into the finished piece, which naturally affects the audience's reaction.

Nevertheless, I found that seeing the actual food alters my perception of the 'ritual.' It is more real and immediate, and the implications seem more profound. I have always been struck by the stark contrast between the apparent humanity of offering someone who is condemned the dignity of a final meal request and the barbarity of the actual act of execution. The photographs seem to make this contrast more tangible.

Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e 
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

Posted by David Chandler at 9:54 PM

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Strategic CSR - The future

 
This is the last CSR Newsletter of the Fall semester.
Happy Holidays and I will see you in the New Year!
 

I try and keep the opening and closing newsletters of the term a little shorter, as things are just getting going or just winding down, and I figure you are all busy doing other things. The article in the url below makes this easy because it is about a photograph that has been shortlisted this year for the Prix Pictet prize in London. The nominated photograph was taken at a garbage dump in Senegal, which is named Mbeubeuss:

"The land on which it sits was once flat swampland. It began as a landfill site in 1968; today, it is a mountain of rubbish. It has accumulated so much plastic waste from the city that to reach it you have to drive on a road of compacted trash."

The article features an interview with the photographer, Fabrice Monteiro, so I'll let you read more into the photograph and how it came about, if you would like. For this newsletter, I think the photograph speaks loudly enough for itself:


As the photographer concludes:

"Across all I do, I'm interested in identity and how we separate ourselves from those we consider the 'other.' Throughout history, humankind has created an idea of the other in order to justify his or her exploitation. It is an idea that was central to slavery and colonialism. But it's also at the heart of our approach to the environment. Only because we see ourselves as apart from the natural world, or superior to it, can we continue to treat it this way."

For more environmental photography, there is a related story here.

Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e 
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


Fabrice Monteiro's best photograph: A spirit emerges from a rubbish dump in Senegal
By Edward Siddons
November 24, 2021
The Guardian

Posted by David Chandler at 2:01 PM

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Strategic CSR - Obituaries

I generally do not spend much time with the obituaries in The New York Times, although I know they are well-written and researched. I do tend to read The Economist's obituary, since they only publish one a week (and, like everything The Economist does, it usually has an interesting twist), but it is not a particular area of interest – something about looking forward, rather than back, I suspect. Anyway, the obituary in the url below caught my interest because it covers a number of issues that I care about (art as social commentary, the SCOTUS, constitutional law and, in particular here in the U.S., the death penalty):

"Six tacos, six glazed doughnuts and a Cherry Coke: That was the last meal of a man executed in Oklahoma in July 1999. Rendered in cobalt blue glaze on a white china plate the next year, it was the first in Julie Green's decades-long art project, 'The Last Supper,' which documented the final meals of death row prisoners around the country."

The motivation for Green doing what she did (and devoting her life to it), I think, is both noble and a searing commentary on this particular U.S. institution:

"To Professor Green, who taught art at Oregon State University, their choices put a human face on an inhumane practice. Some requests were elaborate: fried sac-a-lait fish (otherwise known as white perch or crappie, it's the state fish of Louisiana) topped with crawfish étouffée. And some were starkly mundane: two peanut butter cups and a Dr Pepper."

Green also had a clear goal in mind:

"She planned to paint the meals until capital punishment was abolished, or until she had made 1,000 plates, whichever came first. In September, she painted her 1,000th plate, an oval platter with a single familiar image: the bottle of Coca-Cola requested by a Texas man in 1997."

Ironically given the subject matter of her work, her death was a controlled intervention:

"She died a few weeks later, on Oct. 12, at her home in Corvallis, Ore., by physician-assisted suicide, which is permitted under Oregon's Death With Dignity Act."

For Green, the subject of her work, food, was central to the point of what she was doing:

"Professor Green was teaching at the University of Oklahoma when she read the details of a recently executed man's final meal in a local paper, The Norman Transcript. The menu's homeyness — those glazed doughnuts — and its specificity made her think of all the meals she had prepared and shared with her family. The man had committed a horrific crime, but his food preferences humanized him. 'I'm a food person,' she told The New York Times in 2013. 'I grew up with great cooks and great food. Food has always been a celebratory thing for me. That's part of why this whole thing is interesting to me, because of the contrast. It's not a celebration.'"

Part of her intention is to highlight the contrast in approaches across states to this relatively humane gesture that is part of such an inhumane process:

"Texas, which has executed more prisoners than any other state in the country (573 since 1976, including three men this year), no longer allows special meal requests; its menus are drawn from standard prison fare. But not all states are so rigid. In 2001 in Indiana, a prison granted an inmate's request to have his mother make him chicken dumplings in the institution's kitchen. Professor Green painted the word 'Mother' on the platter that pays homage to that meal. Another Indiana inmate told prison officials that he'd never had a birthday cake, so they ordered him one, along with the pizza he had requested, which he shared with 15 family members and friends in 2007. Professor Green painted a cake that bristles with candles."

In addition, she saw her work as an extension of the reason last suppers are published – to create a formal record of an act that is sanctioned by the state. And, of course because she was painting food, the canvas should be a plate:

"In 1917, a Montana man asked only for an apple. 'I have a bad taste in my mouth,' he was reported as saying. In Mississippi in 1947, two Black teenagers asked for fried chicken and watermelon before they went to the electric chair. Professor Green painted one ornate platter for each boy."

The photo in the article shows some of the hundreds of plates that Green painted. The description attached is pertinent:

"Julie Green in 2013 with some of the hundreds of plates on which she painted death row inmates' last meals. 'Andy Warhol said in the future the artist will just point,' she said. 'I paint to point.'"

Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e 
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


Julie Green, 60, Artist who Memoralized Inmates' Last Suppers, Dies
By Penelope Green
November 8, 2021
The New York Times
Late Edition – Final
D7

Posted by David Chandler at 1:17 AM

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Strategic CSR - Artwash

The article in the url below reviews an art show at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Specifically, the show is titled Automania and studies the car as a piece of art; it is up until January 2022:

"In 1974 Andy Warhol bought himself a two-tone Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow — brown roof, black doors — custom-ordered from London. It didn't matter that Warhol had no driver's license. For some a car is more than a vehicle, and in 'Automania,' the Museum of Modern Art's engine-revving summer show, the automobile appears as an art object all its own."

For the art critic writing the review, however, while he can appreciate the show's artistic elements, he takes issue with its timing given the current discussion around the car and, more specifically, its fuel source:

"Of course it's the cars that are the main attraction of 'Automania.' Although, in a week when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed that 'warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia,' a show devoted to the personal motorcar feels a bit like one devoted to lethal poisons."

The author's favorite car in the show (1 of only 9 cars actually on display) is the VW Beetle:

"If, however, you asked me which auto says the most about the culture of its time and ours, it's the VW Beetle, parked upstairs, where it's shown with a 1950s film reel from the assembly line. Properly called the Type 1 Sedan, the small, aerodynamic 'people's car,' designed by Ferdinand Porsche in 1938, responded to Adolf Hitler's challenge to German industry to develop an inexpensive ride for a family of four. It would become, after the war, the world's best-selling car, and a motor – quite literally – of West Germany's economic miracle."

But, this reflection causes the author to take MoMA to task for its long-standing relationship with VW:

"In a wall panel the curators mention the Beetle's 'inglorious origins,' though there is more recent VW unpleasantness this show and catalog do not discuss. Over the last decade, MoMA has enjoyed more than a million dollars in support each year from Volkswagen – a company that admitted to equipping 11 million cars with illegal software to cheat emissions testing, and then lying to investigators about the scheme."

Specifically:

"While one VW division was violating the Clean Air Act, another was putting its name on MoMA programming that would boost its civic credentials — notably 'Expo 1: New York,' at MoMA PS1, a Volkswagen-funded ecological showcase from 2013 that in retrospect looks like an egregious act of greenwashing. 'Volkswagen is das Auto, and MoMA is das Museum,' Martin Winterkorn, then its chief executive, said pithily in 2015. He is now facing criminal charges in the U.S. and Germany, though he has long contended that he was unaware of any wrongdoing."

The point, of course, resembles the criticism that has been levelled at the Sackler family (and the museums that have gratefully taken their donations) for their stewardship of Purdue Pharma (and the opioid crisis in the U.S.). The author digs deeper:

"Yet even after one of the largest corporate and environmental scandals in history, Volkswagen's American subsidiary remains MoMA's 'lead partner of education.' It supports PS1's public programming, which took place for nearly a decade in a Volkswagen-branded geodesic dome (finally retiring it in 2020). The museum has a traineeship program known as the VW Fellows, who appear in Volkswagen promotional materials and even get to visit the car plant in Wolfsburg. And Volkswagen of America underwrote the restoration of the Beetle in 'Automania,' which the museum initially acquired in 2002."

But, it is MoMA's attempt to justify its ongoing relationship with VW that pushes the author to refer to a term I had not seen before – artwashing:

"And really, this might all be so much inside-philanthropy, except that the organizers of 'Automania' explicitly discuss polluters' interest in art in the catalog and the museum's online magazine. In both, Kinchin writes about the corporate practice of 'artwashing, a by now well-established branding strategy practiced by the polluting fossil fuel industry.' The curator singles out Shell, which commissioned English artists to make posters of the bucolic English countryside; it also mentions Mobil, whose art philanthropy in the 1970s and 1980s was the subject of Hans Haacke's institutional critique, and recent demonstrations against BP's sponsorship of London museums."

It is the hypocrisy that grates the most:

"For MoMA to criticize Shell, Mobil and BP for 'artwashing,' and then to ignore the criminal polluters still supporting its own museum, takes a real brass neck."

Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e 
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/


At MoMA, Love of Cars Cuts Two Ways
By Jason Farago
August 13, 2021
The New York Times
Late Edition – Final
C11

Posted by David Chandler at 3:32 PM

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Strategic CSR - Banksy

 
Welcome back to the Strategic CSR Newsletter!
The first newsletter of the Fall semester is below.
As always, your comments and ideas are welcome.
 
 
I'll begin this semester's newsletters by sharing a video released recently by Banksy about his exploits during his 2021 summer vacation or "spraycation," as he termed it:


The connection to strategic CSR might not be immediately obvious, but I find Banksy's social commentary to be cutting and unfailingly on-point (JR is another contemporary artist I like with a similar political/social angle to his work). The underlying antagonism toward those in authority and privilege in society is reinforced, of course, by the anti-authoritarian foundations of his medium, graffiti.

One of my home country's better contributions to contemporary social discourse, I think. Ironically, of course, it is his critique of contemporary society that makes him so effective.

Hope you all have a great semester.
Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e 
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

Posted by David Chandler at 8:23 AM

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Strategic CSR - Lil Nas X

Following on from Tuesday's newsletter, the articles in the three urls below introduce a more light-hearted take on the influence of religion in the U.S. today. You may have seen the recent story about the rapper, Lil Nas X, repurposing 666 pairs of Nike shoes to promote the release of his new song, 'Montero (Call Me By Your Name).' If not, the article in the first url provides a flavor of what you missed:

"Nike has won its lawsuit against Brooklyn art collective MSCHF over their controversial 'Satan Shoes' that contain a drop of real human blood in the soles. The $1,018 (£740) trainers are modified Nike Air Max 97s that feature an inverted cross, a pentagram and the words 'Luke 10:18.' MSCHF produced the shoes in collaboration with rapper Lil Nas X. It said only 666 pairs were made and all but one have already been shipped."

Apparently, Nike was unimpressed and sued the rapper, along with the company that produced the shoes (MSCHF), for trademark infringement, claiming that consumers might be confused about Nike's involvement in the project:

"'MSCHF and its unauthorised Satan Shoes are likely to cause confusion and dilution and create an erroneous association between MSCHF's products and Nike,' the sports shoe giant said in the lawsuit. Lawyers for MSCHF countered that the 666 pairs it created were 'not typical sneakers, but rather individually-numbered works of art that were sold to collectors for $1,018 each.' Siding with Nike, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday."

The idea was quite clever, I think, and not only because the restraining order has little effect given that the company has no plans to produce any more of the shoes (and has sold all but one of the shoes it did produce). The 'stunt' is a clever play on the content of the song the shoes were tied to and the resulting video (which the article details), enhancing the message, while the subsequent 'recall' agreed to by MSCHF is essentially meaningless, given that it is voluntary (see here). The release of the shoes certainly achieved Lil Nas X's goal as the song entered the charts at No.1 soon afterwards (see here). Beyond the shock value of putting human blood in the sole of the shoes, however, there are two aspects of the story that became apparent as I discussed it with students in my Executive MBA class. First, as noted in the article in the second url below, the same company that Lil Nas X partnered with to produce the shoes, also produced some Jesus shoes in 2019 (no connection to Lil Nas X). In place of blood, the shoes that time contained "holy water" and sold for $1,425 each (but in online re-sale sites for up to $4,000), rather than the lowly sum of $1,018 for Lil Nas X's Satan shoes:

"A pair of 'Jesus Shoes' are on sale for $4,000 — and for that price, the lucky owner can literally walk on water. The shoes were designed by Brooklyn-based creative arts company MSCHF and they come with holy water in the soles. MSCHF bought a normal pair of Nike Air Max 97 sneakers at market value, the company's head of commerce, Daniel Greenberg, confirmed to CBS News. A plain pair of men's Air Max 97s go for about $160, but MSCHF completely revamped the shoe and added a golden Jesus on a crucifix as a shoelace charm. MSCHF also sourced holy water from the River Jordan, which was blessed by a priest in Brooklyn and added it to the soles of the sneaker."

Second, and perhaps most funny about the whole story, though, is that Nike did not sue the company over the Jesus shoes, while it did sue over the Satan shoes. Apparently, Nike didn't even issue a statement at the time, much to the disappointment of MSCHF, as noted in the article in the third url below:

"The sneakers quickly sold out and began appearing on resale sites, going for as much as $4,000. The Christian Post wrote about them. Drake wore them. They were among the most Googled shoes of 2019. The only thing that didn't happen, said Kevin Wiesner, 27, a creative director at MSCHF, was a public disavowal of the shoes by Nike or the Vatican. 'That would've been rad,' he said."

This produced an interesting conversation in class about the relative costs and benefits for Nike of being linked (however unwittingly) with either Jesus or Satan. While we concluded that the relative downsides of being linked to either was an interesting debate, we all agreed there is potentially a strong upside of being linked to Jesus, while no one could think of an upside to being linked to Satan. In other words, the devil-worshipping market segment in society was thought to be much smaller than the God-worshipping market segment, which might have been the clinching argument for Nike in its decision of whether to sue. Of course, as so often happens in such cases, the result of the lawsuit was only to draw greater attention to the shoes (and song) and no doubt exceed Lil Nas X's expectations for the stunt.

Take care
David

David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020

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Nike wins court bid over 'Satan Shoes' with human blood
April 1, 2021
BBC News

"Jesus shoes" with holy water in the soles are selling for $4,000
By Caitlin O'Kane
October 11, 2019
CBS News

The Story of MSCHF, a Very Modern … Business?
By Sanam Yar
January 30, 2020
The New York Times

Posted by David Chandler at 8:48 PM
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