[...] TonyGentilcore.com » Best. Ad. Campaign. EVER tonygentilcore.com/2010/07/best-ad-campaign-ever/ – view page – cached Back in 2005, Nike ran an unprecedented ad campaign demonstrating to the world that it’s A-okay to have a badonkadonk; and, what’s more, anyone who happened to disagree, should kiss said badonkadonk (raises hand: yes please). I thought it was brilliant, and exactly the type of message that women need to hear and see. Tweets about this link [...]

[...] pic is from TonyGentilcore.com. You should go there and read his post. There will be more “inspiration” next [...]

Epically(not a real word) agreed Tony!

@ Morgan: I saw that too. Someone in another thread mentioned that as well, and someone else chimed in and provided a link suggesting that that is a “passable” way of spelling the word. *shrugs* Either way, its awesome. Don’t be a Johnny Raincloud!!!…..;o)

This needs to be made into t-shirts.

Any serious man or woman who “gets it” as far as training is concerned is going to understand the ad. This woman is beautiful and sexy and puts classic print ad models to shame. Lunges, lunges, lunges. Amen.

While I appreciate the shift in advertising that suggests women should be proud of their bodies and they don’t have to be stick thin like models - this ad still objectifies women. It redefines what is sexy, but is still shows that women need to be sexy. I wish I could say Nike was inspirational in this endeavor, but they are simply adding to the popularity of the kim and jennifer booties of hollywood. Instead of accepting their bodies, women are now being sold underwear that includes extra butt padding! so they can look like the woman in this ad and like the women this model is modeled after. I feel it is a lateral move.

Not as good as the Irish Hunky Dory Adverts that had a red team and a blue team.. I’ll leave it to the wonders of their website to show you the adverts.
http://hunkydorys.rubylithcms.com/kit_bag/

Oh man, I’m sooo glad you posted this! I remember the Nike ads where the woman says something about loving her Thunder Thighs - I cut it out of the magazine I was reading and put it up on my wall! Nice work Tony.

Considering the woman in the poster is still skinnier than 80% of the US female population, I’d hardly call that an inspiration to just be yourself.

She’s very skinny. She has thunder thighs because that happens to be her body shape. How do I know? I have the same body shape. I wear size 0 shirts, size 0 skirts, and size 4 pants. I’m shaped just like her, and I did zero work to make my butt round, thighs large and muscular, while keeping my belly flat.

I say the message in this poster is still you must be skinny or you’re ugly. If she needs a message saying her round butt is okay, what does that say about anyone who’s larger than her?

I LOVE THIS!!! She looks like me. Thank you.

Oh and to those of you complaining that she is not plus sized with a round butt… do you think Nike wants to promote unhealthy/overweight bodies? This girl is not “skinny” either… She’s probably at or above her optimal BMI. Skinny is unhealthy - this girl is not. She just has a nice large butt in proportion to her overall healthy weight - and they are saying that is ok.

And then you visit the website and look through their products only to find nothing but skinny unrealistic models, not a single woman anything like what the ad promotes… way to drop the ball.

Embassador? Surely they mean “ambassador”?

Unless your fucking dying of something because your too fat– people just need to love themselves. I’m tired of so and so celeb having a baby and being a double 0 two months later–we need to face the truth and stop being so freaking critical of each other. There’s commercials on tv of a hot size 0 woman chowing down a burger with sauce all over the place and come on, they rarely get to enjoy stuff like that and some of us can never if we want to just be an average size! Men have this idea that they can eat whatever they want and the women can chow down on ice cubes and lettuce. Unless your struggling to walk up stairs or have back pains cos of your fat, just be at peace with yourself. Someone has to be the chubby mom or the curvy sister. Love yourselfs, we obsess over this shit because of society’s pressure. I dont think it’s easy for todays’ woman to eat nothing, cook dinner for her family, work and take care of the house and kids and excercise, are u kidding me? If we all had the money, we’d all be skinny little fuckers. I’m sure the celebs make themselves sick with tryin to be skinny and you know what? I feel sorry for them. No one cares about what’s inside, only what’s outside. Women have hips and big butts and big tits naturally, what’s unatural is starving one’s self and getting implants and injections just to be beautiful. I AM BEAUTIFUL goddamnit, cellutlite, jiggles and all. Look at all the sick celebrities hooked on dope and getting huge magazine articles about how great they are because they starve themselves and work out 24/7. Get with it people, everyone knows a little cushion is better for pushing. Men that want to lay on a pile of coathangers are just punkass bitches who should be starving themselves. WORD.

People who complain this ad doesn’t show a “real” plus-sized woman are completely missing the point. Her butt is round because she WORKS OUT. Believe it or not, if you work hard to build strong glute muscles, you can get a gorgeous round beehind. That is a very very different thing from, as my friend likes to say, Crisco - fat in the can. Nike doesn’t need to apologize for targeting women who want to appreciate a gorgeous, strong female body. If you want to celebrate the curves that come different lifestyle choices (choices that don’t involve working very very hard picking up heavy things), that’s fine, but come on, that’s just not Nike’s line of work. Nike is not in the fat acceptance business. It’s in the fitness business.

(And yeah yeah you can be fit and fat. bla bla bla. Missing the point.)

How very sad is it that the sight of a strong muscular rear end is so rare that people seem to think the ad must be about fat acceptance.

Very well said! A breath of fresh air indeed. My girlfriend is a personal trainer, she has a medium built, toned body, that I love. Much more attractive than the frail looking “ideal” women we see in magazines. Keep it up Nike!

@Dillon: I’m curious, can you explain what an ad that shows a human body looks like if it’s not objectifying it? Follow up question: does your answer work for a company selling athletic gear?

@mccn: Unless my eyes are crapping out on me, the woman in this ad is some percentage Hispanic and has dark, wavy hair. It sounds like you’re more upset that this ad does not appeal a specific fetish you have than any concern for seeing a homogenized image. One more point - I know plenty of women who would be extremely pleased to make this woman’s acquaintance. Not everyone is straight like you.

This is an ad for Nike, folks, which is clearly going to try and sell you a muscular, fit body with their fancy shoes. Dove had a similar campaign (”Real Beauty”) with a range of multicolored, soft bodies. Did you complain at the time that muscular women covered in axle grease were being unfairly left out? It’s an ad, and ads sell products. Think it through.

Effen SWEET post!

Any idea who the model is? I have a couple of women clients who’d like to know!

I linked to this post today in my own blog!!

@Dillon, @mccn, @Delphine, @Desiree a few points:
1. Why would anyone want to “just be themselves”? Shouldn’t you (we) all be striving to improve? Isn’t that the point? Especially for a company that is in a self improvement industry? Why do guys like Tony go to seminars? Why to athletes practice? Why do people go to school?
2. Women (and men) DO need to be sexy - at least if they want to attract a mate. Millions of years of evolution have drilled that into us.
3. Both genders get objectified. This hasn’t changed and never will. Beautiful people sell products.
4. I have a friend who works in the supplement industry. The (female) models his company uses in women’s magazines are on average 20# smaller than the models used in men’s magazines. Its not men that are pulling for the stick figures (we typically athletic women like what is shown here) but other women.
5. You don’t look like this because you have *chosen* to put your kids, career, eating junk food, TV or whatever else ahead of physical fitness. I’m not knocking you for it (and in many cases the choice is very admirable) but I do think you should stop complaining. You made the choice, now live with the consequences (one of which being that you won’t look like the people in magazines).
6. The vast majority of people equate fat with ugly. This doesn’t mean fat people are bad people, they’re just not physically attractive.

Much of what I’ve said is pretty harsh - but it is reality and it isn’t likely to change any time soon. Perhaps you should devote more effort to changing yourselves rather than trying to change everyone else.

I find it a little annoying that MULTIPLE people have posted comments regarding the use of the embassador spelling of ambassador. It’s not a huge fault if they’re unfamiliar with that spelling, but it is just lazy that these people did not take the minute to verify their claims. They’d find it as an accepted variant in the dictionary, and passes Microsoft word spell check.

On the image itself, I think any negative feedback really highlights how grossly out of touch the American body image is. Yes, the wafer thin models of fashion magazines is not healthily attainable for the majority of women, but the backlash by fat apologists is just a little ridiculous. Whenever I travel to Europe or Asia it always takes me a couple days of shock thinking every girl I see must be starving themselves, but then I see how active daily life is for them and how they can clear a plate without a hint of guilt, and realize that these women are hardly suffering or torturing themselves. Relating back to the woman in the image she doesn’t look like that by virtue of her genes, but the combination of the hard work to sculpt that body. Hating on her for saying her fit body is not natural would be like guys complaining about how they can’t get a 6 pack if they never do a situp.

Okay, so you’re all like woo-hoo for doin something positive for the ladies. Cool. Then I read “douchehole” — hmmmm… now what the heck do you think that does for the ladies? Made me stop writing and totally took my focus off your laud for the Nike ad.

Yes, the being beautiful is important. Lets treat woman’s body’s as an advertisement. How shallow is the ad. It’s a shoe. Not an ass. Blah Blah Blah, shallow.

I appreciate this, but for most women, its not the ass that’s the problem. I want to see the same ad with a woman and her “gut” And she says… “My belly is my ambassador” Many ads with “large” models are great, but these “large” models always seem to have amazing abs.

There’s talk of this add being fake. Interesting.

Her butt is -not- “big.” It’s very much in proportion with the rest of her lovely body. At first glance it might seem bigger than it is, then you realize those ridiculously impractical shorts are worn oddly to try to add the illusion of size. She’s fine and Nike’s a horrible company, both for its attempt to meld shame and confidence into a creepy hybrid and its rampant exploitation of workers.

And as someone else said, she’s -still- being objectified. -This- is your idea of the best ad campaign ever?!

so in other words you’re cool with nike spending millions to advertise products made with slave labor as long as the model looks a little more like you?

another day, same old bullshit.