Case Study 3 Reebok Shawn Kemp Kamikaze Ad

In 1995, Reebok submitted an advertisement to the TVCAB, an agency established to review all advertisements before public screening. The commercial was rejected by the TVCAB before it ever went to air, hence, there was no official complaint made, nor the need for an Advertising Standards Complaints Board (ASCB) hearing. Nevertheless, the commercial gained considerable publicity, including a focused discussion led by TV3's Bill Ralston during his dedicated segment of the evening news.

In brief, the ad features a one-on-one game of basketball between the NBA's Shawn Kemp and an animated, high-tech, grim-reaper figure who challenges opponents by warning: "Only those with superhuman ability may enter my court." Kemp takes up the challenge, stating: "I've got next," which results in the hooded skeleton-figure transforming into a warrior. A physical contest ensues and Kemp, with the aid of his Reebok Kamikaze basketball shoes, drives hard to the basket emitting what has been described as a primal scream, causing the warrior to explode.

The TVCAB ruled that the ad contained excessive and gratuitous violence. The official TVCAB transcript was not available for this case. However, the basis of the decision-making process can be surmised by piecing together various publicly recorded media reports and discussions on the subject. For example, in an official memorandum to Reebok (NZ) Ltd.'s advertising agency MOJO, TVCAB's executive director, Winston Richards, explained:

Our view, consistent with our previous decisions and with relevant determinations of the Advertising Standards and Complaints Board, is that the level of aggression and violence are totally unacceptable in an advertisement for sports shoes____the basic concept of a shoe advertisement which turns basketball into a battle is likely to be unduly offensive to a significant section of the community____and therefore amendments to this advertisement are unlikely to make it acceptable. (Reebok commercial banned in New Zealand, 1995, p. 1)

According to Reebok's marketing manager, Jeremy O'Rourke, the ad simply combines two popular teenage activities, basketball and video games, and translates these through Shawn Kemp's kamikaze style ofplay in order to reach their intended target market. But, this argument did not sway the TVCAB. For example, during his appearance on TV3's Ralston program, Winston Richards countered Reebok's O'Rourke:

Basketball is theoretically a non-contact sport . . . it doesn't really matter that the character is computer generated . . . the key is the violence . . . it does carry the standard techniques for enhancing violence in cinematic-type terms . . . it has all the elements of enhanced violence through sound effects and the obscured activity where you're not quite sure what happens. (Ralston, TV3 News, 1995)

According to Richards, the fact that the violence in the advertisement is part of a fantasy competition between a sport hero and an animated video character is largely irrelevant. The banning of the ad, or more accurately the refusal to approve it for airing, was clearly a shock to Reebok. In the words of Reebok (NZ) Ltd. general manager Ian Fulton, he was "staggered" (Reebok commercial banned in New Zealand, 1995). Reebok had invested a lot of time and energy into the Kamikaze campaign, and posters, based on the TV commercial, were already in circulation in sport stores and on the streets. In Fulton's words: "It is painful to see this work go to waste because of the television ban" (Reebok commercial banned in New Zealand, 1995, p. 2).

There are several interesting features surrounding the banning of this ad. First, although it is not stated in the official memorandum sent to Reebok, statements by the TVCAB's executive director, Winston Richards, in newspaper and TV interviews, allude to the American source of the violence in advertising production. For example, he stated: "There seems to be a trend over the past couple of years, originating in America, to have increasingly violent and aggressive sport-shoe commercials and in our view they are inappropriate" (Sport shoe advert ban stuns Reebok, 1995, p. 7). Later, when challenged with the fact that the same advertisement was playing successfully in almost every other Reebok market, Richards replied:

It is an American commercial that is certainly played in America and Australia. But we are more conservative when it comes to violence than America, and quite properly so in my view, and more conservative than Australia, and that is quite clearly spelled out in Complaints Board decisions (TV3's Ralston, 1995).

Richards not only targeted America as the source of the violence within advertising but also made it clear that New Zealand is different from both the United States and Australia with respect to local policy on the problem. Here, Richards employed the term conservative to connote a national censorship policy.

A second notable feature of the Reebok Kamikaze ban is that it received considerable attention within both local and international media. In fact, there were a number of local newspaper articles referring to how the case was being reported overseas. The local concern for the global media coverage of the Reebok case can be interpreted in at least two ways. On the one hand, it is an indication of New Zealand's "Davey versus Goliath" attitude toward challenging American and other multinationals and asserting its local culture and identity (perhaps reminiscent of its anti-nuclear stance against the United States in the 1970s and 1980s). On the other hand, these media reports could be interpreted as subtle critiques of New Zealand conservatism, which could potentially impede international trade links and the advancement of the local economy. In short, there was an apparent fear within some sectors that New Zealand would gain a reputation for being overly resistant, indeed, bordering on paranoid, to global economic development (Goll, 1995). The basis of this fear was confirmed by the fact that the Reebok case was linked to other recent bans of non-sport-related advertisements in New Zealand. For example, Goll (1995:1) in an Asian Wall StreetJournal article titled "New Zealand bans Reebok, other ads it deems politically incorrect for TV," discussed the recent banning of Coca-Cola Co., Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW), and Chanel SA ads.

Third and finally, it would be neglectful to completely ignore the issue of race, given that Shawn Kemp is black. In brief, we simply posit the question of whether or not there is any possibility of a global/local disjuncture within the context of racialized sporting others in New Zealand. At this point, it seems premature to make any conclusive statements. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that black athletes, as well as musicians and other popular culture icons, are fixtures of fascination among New Zealand youth (Allison, 1991; Lealand, 1994). A couple of studies, for example, have examined the popular presence of American sporting culture in general and Michael Jordan in particular in New Zealand (Andrews, Jackson, Carrington, & Mazur, 1996; Jackson & Andrews, 1996, 1999). These authors have suggested that in addition to being attracted to their extraordinary athletic talent, New Zealand youth are fascinated with the excitement and difference offered by American culture. Moreover, the identification of Maori and Polynesian youth in New Zealand may have another dimension. As Wilcox (1996: 123) noted:

Maori and Polynesian youth . . . tend to identify with the music, dress, and styles of their African-American counterparts [where] they find . . . a focal point of resistance, a means of challenging the hegemony of New Zealand's overwhelmingly white power structure through membership in a transnational tribe.

Thus, identification with what they perceive to be their oppressed, transPacific brothers and sisters may be exhibited through consumption of American popular culture, but it may also reflect a more serious agenda of racial politics. Perhaps it is this "black sporting Pacific" that is contributing to unfounded and irrational fears among particular factions within the New Zealand community. For example, it may be that concerns about American televisual violence may be exacerbated by local articulations of street gang culture and perceived rising levels of violence in general. That is, local censorship could be interpreted as a form of resistance against threatening images of America, constructed through the intersection of sport, technology, and commodified images of violence and racial otherness. Obviously, further research is necessary in order to more fully understand the potential link between local media censorship and the perceived threat of racialized others within sport and other advertising campaigns. The Reebok Kamikaze case study is complex, particularly in light of the fact that it received so much publicity and was linked to much wider issues about cultural and racial politics in New Zealand.

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