Many White advertising agencies likely celebrated Cinco de Mayo in stereotypical fashion, with employees donning sombreros, dancing to mariachi music, and drinking margaritas.
Indeed, more time, intent, and resources were probably allocated for partying versus participating in multicultural marketing—or pursuing DEIBA+ initiatives and/or inclusive hiring practices.
Expect the systemic racism to formally resume on May 6.
Glossy reported how certain shoe brands sought to capitalize on the Nike Boston Marathon stumble.
Not convinced leveraging a competitor’s cultural cluelessness creates a strong strategic platform.
A more appropriate response might be walking the high road. Or just walking away.
Nike’s marathon billboard backlash inspires new Asics and Ecco campaigns
By Zofia Zwieglinska
Following Nike’s Boston Marathon backlash, competitors jumped on the opportunity to define “movement” on their own terms, beyond the marathon run.
In the days leading up to Monday’s Boston Marathon, Nike installed a series of signs near its Newbury Street store, including one that read, “Runners welcome, walkers tolerated.” The message drew immediate criticism online, with runners calling out the wording as exclusionary, particularly given how common it is for participants at all levels to walk parts of a marathon.
On April 17, Nike removed the sign. In a statement released the same day, the company said, “We want more people to feel welcome in running—no matter their pace, experience, or the distance. During race week in Boston, we put up a series of signs to encourage runners. One of them missed the mark. We took it down, and we’ll use this moment to do better and continue showing up for all runners.”
The response from competitors in the running space was swift. Japanese running shoe brand Asics installed its own messaging in Boston over race weekend, with a billboard reading, “Runners. Walkers. All Welcome,” alongside the line, “Move your body, move your mind.” The phrasing echoed the brand’s broader campaign, which emphasizes the mental benefits of movement alongside physical performance, but its timing positioned it as a direct counterpoint to Nike’s misstep.
Danish shoe brand Ecco, meanwhile, used the moment to introduce a longer-term change in how it talks about movement.
Over the marathon weekend, in Boston, the brand launched “Walk Your Walk,” a global campaign centered on everyday movement, rather than performance sport. The campaign is anchored by the line, “No run intended. Walk your walk,” and positions walking as a primary use case rather than a secondary one.
Ecco’s global CMO, Ezra Martin, said the timing was not coincidental, though the brand’s aim was not to directly criticize Nike’s billboard.
“We always pay attention to what’s happening in culture,” Martin told Glossy. “We all saw what other brands were doing and saying in the space. Walking became sort of the centerpiece of the cultural lexicon in that moment in time, which made it a natural platform for us to have a point of view.”
Walking has become more culturally relevant in recent years, driven in part by trends like “hot girl walks,” coined on TikTok during the pandemic, and the wider move away from high-intensity workout culture and looksmaxing. At the same time, analysts including Circana have pointed to growing demand for comfort-led, everyday footwear, as shoppers look for products that fit into daily routines and a softer approach to fitness rather than just peak performance moments.
“Walking is becoming a symbol of accessible well-being,” Martin said, pointing to its physical, mental and social benefits. According to the National Library of Medicine, walking 9,000–10,000 steps a day can cut mortality risk by about 40% and cardiovascular disease by more than 20%, while even 10–30 minutes of brisk walking daily supports heart health, mental well-being and longevity. “Consumers are prioritizing longevity and quality of life,” said Martin.
The campaign also marks a new approach to brand building for Ecco.
“This marks a very purposeful movement into more of a brand-led conversation,” Martin said. “We want to build upper-funnel brand equity and not just do very product-led storytelling.”
Early signals suggest the message is resonating. “We saw record numbers of traffic hitting our site,” Martin said. “It showed that people were going beyond just liking something. They were sharing it, saving it, visiting the website and making a purchase.” The launch post has generated more than 123,000 likes on social, according to the brand, and driven a surge in engagement. The brand has 658,000 followers on Instagram.
On the ground in Boston, Ecco paired the campaign with light-touch activations, including product-trial moments.
“People really connected with the simplicity and inclusivity of the message,” Martin said. “The magic in our shoes is that the technology is invisible — we don’t have visible airbags or exaggerated outsoles like a Hoka, where you look at the shoe and immediately think it’s comfortable. Ours looks like a well-designed shoe, so the best way to understand it is to actually try it on.”
Advertising Age published a perspective on the Nike Boston Marathon stumble, presented by a disability community advocate.
The viewpoint inadvertently underscores that confronting cultural cluelessness in Adland is a never-ending marathon.
How Nike’s Boston Marathon ad exposed a gap in disability fluency
By Kelsey Lindell
Last week, a Nike window a few blocks from the Boston Marathon finish line read “Runners welcome. Walkers tolerated.” The ad got pushback from the disability community and running community at large. The brand forgot that it’s completely normal to walk parts of the course, whether that is due to disability, or the fact that 26.2 miles is a very long run.
The company pulled the ad, saying it “missed the mark,” and replaced it with “Boston will always remind you, movement is what matters.” To Nike’s credit, the cleanup was fast and it’s a company that has invested heavily in accessibility in terms of product. But investing in product accessibility didn’t save the brand from a public snafu, or prevent competitors from taking ground with the community that Nike had been building towards for decades.
I wish Nike had considered our “Purple Framework,” which asks people to think about disability inclusion as the color purple: red represents accessibility and blue represents acceptance. Many brands, like Nike, invest heavily in adapting the product, or making sure that experiences are physically accessible. Far fewer invest in understanding disability culture.
Take, for example, NBCUniversal: In 2024, it launched new accessibility features around the same time Shane Gillis hosted “Saturday Night Live.” He used the R word multiple times in his opening monologue. You can create the most accessible products in the world, but if you don’t understand and care about our community, you’ll lose your investment fast. That’s precisely what happened with Nike.
While I’m always cheering for more disabled people to be in full-time creative roles, that’s not enough to solve this. A sign like “Walkers tolerated” doesn’t come from one person. It passes through: a brief, copywriter, strategist, designer, account lead, creative director and client review.
Dozens of people touched this before it hit the window, but none flagged it.
The creative community needs to treat disability fluency as the baseline of creative competency, because it is. Just like I need to understand nuances and best practices so I don’t accidentally create something full of microaggressions around race or gender, the creative community needs to understand the nuances and culture of disability.
Here’s what baseline fluency would have caught on the Nike sign:
How Boston Marathon history shapes disability inclusion
The sign went up about a week before Marathon Monday in a city where, in 2013, a bomb at the finish line produced a generation of amputee runners. Fifty years prior, Bob Hall cajoled the Boston Marathon’s race director into letting him onto the start line and the Boston Athletic Association formalized the wheelchair division in 1977. Boston became the first World Marathon Major to institutionalize wheelchair racing, and more than 1,900 wheelchair athletes have competed there since.
The Boston Marathon has an entire inclusive ecosystem: the Wheelchair Division with its own qualifying standards and prize money, a Para Athletics Division, an Adaptive Program for Runners, a Handcycle Program and Duo Teams. Runners with vision impairments race with up to two guide runners. Para athletes get their own staging areas, their own bus load-ins, their own classification processes.
Why ad copy language matters for disability culture
“Tolerated” isn’t a neutral word in the disability community. It’s the word that sits at the top of every policy fight about disabled people’s right to exist in public space for the last fifty years. Using it casually in ad copy is the disability equivalent of using “blind spot” casually in a DEI conversation. It lands hard because it has history.
Nike wanted competitive pride, but the line they wrote wasn’t rooted in celebration of athletic excellence; it was rooted in exclusion. Meanwhile, Nike is in the middle of a running comeback. The brand has been losing ground in specialty running to Brooks, Hoka, On, New Balance, Asics and Saucony. The “Walkers tolerated” sign didn’t just alienate disabled runners, but anyone beginning to see themselves as an athlete. Those are exactly the customers Nike is trying to win back.
How Nike’s competitors responded to the disability backlash
The brands that moved fastest are also the brands gaining on Nike in specialty. Brands that can read the room on disability and inclusive language now have a real window for cheap, fast, high-resonance moves. Brands that can’t are going to be left in the dust.
Within 72 hours of Nike’s sign going viral, five competitors moved. Asics put up a billboard 1 mile from the finish line outside Fenway Park, reading “Runners. Walkers. All welcome,” Ecco went bigger—billboards across Boston reading “No run intended. Walk your walk,” plus a giveaway of 100 pairs of sneakers to everyday walkers and marathon spectators, and on-route cheering stations for “runners and walkers alike with equal enthusiasm.”
Altra posted on Instagram: “Run. Walk. Crawl. Go where you’re celebrated. Not where you’re tolerated. Good luck to everyone running (or walking) Boston on Monday.” Hoka kept it simple: “No matter what pace, we fly together.” Adidas—the title sponsor of the Boston Marathon, whose spotlight Nike was trying to steal with this guerrilla activation, commented directly on adaptive runner Robyn Michaud’s Instagram post with a single line: “Every pace has a pace.” Five competitors in three days, and four of them don’t even have adaptive product lines. Nike does.
Why brands must treat disability inclusion as a cultural imperative
This is the cleanest case for our Purple Framework I’ve seen: you can invest millions into accessible products and still lose the disability community overnight if your cultural understanding hasn’t kept pace.
The fix isn’t complicated: give your teams enough time and cultural grounding to actually care about what they’re making. I absolutely do not think that any of the creatives on this project sought out to alienate 25% of the population with $13 trillion in spending. Culture moves fast. While we encourage everyone to co-create with the community, the way we prevent cultural faux pas while working at lightning speed is by giving everyone the same frameworks to self-correct.
None of this is rocket science. The frameworks needed to audit are learnable in a day, and we often deliver it to teams in microdosed portions. It’s the same cultural fluency a good creative has always been expected to develop. Disability is only represented in 1% of ads, so while it’s understandable that this is a growth area for most creatives, it begs the question: what are brands doing to fix it?
Strategic inclusion is not just a matter of “being a good person.” The people who worked on this ad are likely all wonderful, kind people who would never want to hurt people with disabilities. But those of us who create content create culture—and we need to treat disability as more than a compliance checkpoint and embrace it for the multifaceted, multidimensional community that it is.
Kelsey Lindell is the founder + CEO of Misfit Media, a disability culture consultancy that helps the world’s greatest storytellers and creative teams get strategic inclusion right.
Another sign that the Apocalypse is upon Adland.
Advertising Age reported Nike—yes, Nike—got kicked for cultural cluelessness stemming from Boston Marathon advertising that read, “Runners welcome. Walkers tolerated.”
Online backlash charged Nike displayed “lack of inclusivity and elitist athletic view.”
It’s a wonder no one thought walkers referred to mobility aids for adults—otherwise, the outrage would have included accusations of ageism.
Nike removes ‘walkers tolerated’ sign following backlash as rivals post more inclusive views
By Adrianne Pasquarelli
Nike landed in hot water this week for an ad outside its Boston store ahead of the Boston Marathon on Monday. The sign, which read “Runners welcome. Walkers tolerated,” invited broad online backlash for its lack of inclusivity and elitist athletic view. Nike removed the sign on Friday and issued a statement.
“We want more people to feel welcome in running—no matter their pace, experience or the distance,” the sportswear giant wrote in a statement provided to Ad Age. “During race week in Boston, we put up a series of signs to encourage runners. One of them missed the mark. We took it down, and we’ll use this moment to do better and continue showing up for all runners.”
“Many people taking on the marathon next week will walk all or part of it. For them, what does a message like this say? Does it inspire, or does it exclude?,” wrote Dr. Hussain Al-Zubaidi on Instagram. Others noted the importance of all types of marathon participants.
“To every midpack mom, every charity bib, every comeback story, every person who started late, every person who finished slow and cried anyway. You are not tolerated. You are the point,” wrote Theresa Seitz, author of “Built to Finish,” on Instagram.
It was a rare advertising misstep from a brand that has typically celebrated all athletic achievements with its “Just Do It” mantra. It also opened the door to rivals to step in and promote their support for all types of runners. Both Hoka and Altra posted messages of inclusivity following Nike’s backtracking.
Nike has struggled in recent years to resonate with customers eager for innovation. A turnaround strategy under CEO Elliott Hill has yet to show meaningful effect. The company reported flat revenue of $11.3 billion for its most recent quarter and forecast a 2% to 4% revenue decline for the current quarter. Earlier this month, Hill reportedly told staffers he was tired of talking about fixing Nike. “I want to move to inspiring and driving growth and having fun,” Bloomberg reported he said.
MediaPost spotlighted a new American Crew campaign for its Undetectable hair color product utilizing the tagline: Fly Under The Graydar.
Gray shaming is ageist, no?
This concept apparently flew under—or over—the cultural competence radar, going undetected by the responsible creative team.
Gray Ban: American Crew ‘Flys Under The Graydar’
By Fern Siegel
American Crew wants to eliminate gray hair.
That’s the premise behind its Undetectable, a product promoted with “Fly Under the Graydar” campaign, produced in-house.
The campaign rolls out across digital, social and influencer channels this month. Additional creative is planned throughout the year.
The company is a big proponent of men’s grooming looking effortless. Because gray hair is easy to spot, the creative posits believable color as an essential standard, even as it pinpoints all the signs of obvious dye jobs.
Designed to blend seamlessly with existing grays, Undetectable hair color targets gray hairs and blends them with men’s natural hair color in five minutes.
Johnny Kazlausky, global marketing manager of American Crew, told Out To Launch: “Graydar was built on one simple truth — men don’t mind coloring their hair, they mind it being obvious. That tension has held the category back for years. So instead of focusing on coverage, we flipped the idea entirely. We created it as a cultural wink — this imagined radar for bad dye jobs — that everyone instinctively understands. In our world, the win isn’t being noticed, it’s flying under the Graydar.”
Undetectable Hair Color is available on Amazon Target and most major retailers. It’s also distributed in more than 30,000 salons, barbershops and authorized sellers in 50 countries.
Advertising Age published a perspective titled, “What marketers can learn about culture from this year’s Oscars.”
The author opined, “The most compelling moments [at the Academy Awards] all came from collision—across cultures, art forms, generations, and ways of seeing the world.”
Can’t help but think the op-ed presented an optimistic notion bordering on pollyannaish delusion.
For starters, marketers—and their partnering White advertising agencies—were likely more interested in the commercials that aired during the 98th Academy Awards versus the actual Oscar victories.
The advertisements did not represent a collision across cultures; but rather, a domination of White culture—from content to creators.
In short, what everyone can learn about Adland’s culture from this year’s Oscars—based on viewing commercials that aired during the broadcast—is the industry runs on privilege, exclusivity, and cultural cluelessness.
Adland deserves an Oscar for outstanding performance of systemic racism.
What marketers can learn about culture from this year’s Oscars
By Aaron Walton
If you watched closely, a pattern kept showing up at this year’s Oscars. The most compelling moments all came from collision—across cultures, art forms, generations, and ways of seeing the world.
And that matters, because we’re living in a moment that rewards division. Social feeds sort us. Algorithms separate us. Even storytelling is often reduced to sides. But the work that breaks through doesn’t avoid difference. It brings it together.
One of the most talked-about films of the night, “Sinners,” takes this idea to new heights. The film brings together creative perspectives that don’t typically sit in the same room—a Swedish composer scoring a deeply American story, a Filipina-Black cinematographer shaping its visual language, and a narrative that draws echoes between Irish and Black histories, to name a few.
The Best Original Song category told a similar story. “Golden,” from “KPop Demon Hunters,” became the first K-pop song to win an Oscar. K-pop is, by design, a hybrid—Korean music shaped by hip-hop, R&B, electronic production and global internet culture. It was built for audiences who don’t live inside a single cultural lane.
On its best day, Hollywood isn’t just exporting culture anymore. It’s collaborating with it.
Another striking moment came with the presence of legendary artists Misty Copeland and Buddy Guy. At first glance, ballet and Chicago blues don’t exactly share a playlist. One comes from centuries-old European tradition. The other from African American musical innovation rooted in lived experience. And yet, there they were—part of the same cultural moment.
At the request of filmmaker Ryan Coogler, Copeland wore a Firebird costume created by Geoffrey Holder, on loan from the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s landmark 1982 production. Embedded in the design was a Sankofa symbol, a West African concept meaning “go back and get it,” a way of saying: draw from the past to move forward.
It’s hard to imagine a more precise metaphor for what was happening across the night. Film borrowing from dance. Music shaping narrative. History informing the present. That’s what cultural collision looks like at its best. Intentional. Layered. Forward-moving.
And let’s not underestimate the recognition of Amy Madigan. In an industry that often equates relevance with youth, her win felt like an awakening. Because experience brings something different to storytelling. Some things that can’t be rushed.
And yet, age remains one of the least talked-about dimensions of inclusion. Brands chase what’s next and often overlook what endures. Longevity isn’t the opposite of innovation. It’s often what makes it possible. Persistence and resilience don’t describe anything that happens overnight.
This year also introduced Casting as a new Oscar category. It’s also easy to overlook, but I agree with those who say it’s one of the most important additions in years. Because casting is where culture ignites the story.
Who gets placed at the center determines who gets seen, who gets heard, and who feels invited in. Great casting is about more than identifying great talent. It’s about cultural insight, understanding nuance, recognizing authenticity, and seeing what a story can become when the right person steps into it.
In many ways, casting is strategy. It shapes the story before the first scene is ever shot.
Even the tone of the Oscar ceremony reflected collision. Conan O’Brien approached the night with satire as he tested the audience’s appetite for political humor, and acknowledged tension without losing the room. Jimmy Kimmel, in contrast, took a more direct route, leaning into political commentary.
Both approaches worked. And together, they pointed to something brands are still figuring out. Do you meet people where they are, or do you push them somewhere new? There’s no single answer. But taking a position, however you do it, is part of staying relevant.
The Oscars are easy to dismiss as entertainment. But they’re also a real-time read on what resonates. And this year, the signal was clear.
The work that breaks through doesn’t come from a single perspective. It comes from intersection, which requires different voices in the same room, different histories in the same story, and people who don’t see the world the same way—and aren’t supposed to.
Because that’s where something new happens. For years, the conversation around diversity has focused on fairness. And we shouldn’t forget how much that matters. But we also need to focus on something more active.
Not just inclusion. Integration.
Not just representation. Collaboration.
Because division may be louder. But collision is more powerful.
Division narrows the story. Collision expands it.
And the most interesting work right now, the work that moves people, is doing something even more ambitious. It’s reaching back. Pulling forward. Holding multiple influences at once. Not smoothing them out but letting them shape something new.
Because if this year’s Oscars showed us anything, it’s that the future doesn’t come from choosing sides. It comes from what we’re willing to bring together.
Aaron Walton is CEO at Walton Isaacson
President Donald J. Trump’s return to supremacy continues to mirror Adland.
The Independent reported Trump clumsily delivered a culturally clueless Pearl Harbor joke to a Japanese reporter and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Was Trump inspired by iconic Adman Jerry Della Femina?
Incidentally, the president’s comedy routine, well, bombed.
Trump cracks Pearl Harbor joke when pressed by Japanese reporter on lack of warning over Iran attack
Oval Office crowd left briefly silent after Trump makes light of 83-year-old attack
By Andrew Feinberg in Washington, D.C.
Just over 83 years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt called the Imperial Japanese Navy’s December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor “a date that will live in infamy” as he urged Congress to declare war.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump turned it into a punchline.
Trump was finishing up a question-and-answer session with reporters during a bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi when a Japanese journalist asked why he did not inform key American allies — such as Japan — before the start of the joint U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran on February 28.
The president initially replied that the U.S. “went in very hard” and “didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise.”
But Trump’s response took an awkward turn moments later when he said: “Who knows better about surprise than Japan?”
After some muted laughter from the U.S. officials who’d joined him for the meeting, he turned to Sanae — who was born two decades after the attack — to ask her another question.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK?”
At that point, laughter turned to audible groans. The room went silent.
Takaichi, who spent two years in Washington working on Capitol Hill during the Reagan administration and has a strong command of English, was clearly taken aback by the president’s attempt at humor.
The smile she’d had on her face disappeared and her eyes widened as she realized what Trump had just said.
After an awkward pause, Trump returned to the topic he’d been asked about, telling reporters, “He’s asking me about surprise, and we did.”
“And because of that surprise, we knocked out ... we probably knocked out 50 percent ... and much more than we anticipated doing. So if I go and tell everybody about it, there’s no longer a surprise,” he said.
The surprise Pearl Harbor airstrike against the U.S. Pacific Fleet on Dec. 7, 1941 left more than 2,400 American service members dead and nearly 1,200 injured from bombs and shells that sunk four American battleships and left four more severely damaged. It was the deadliest attack on American soil until the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Seven of those ships were salvaged and returned to service, while the seventh — the U.S.S. Arizona — was left where it had settled just below the harbor’s surface after a Japanese bomb detonated inside a explosive powder magazine.
The attack took place after months of failed negotiations between Tokyo and Washington over economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., the U.K., China and The Netherlands in an attempt to deny Japan’s military the raw materials it needed to prosecute wars in China and what is now Vietnam.
Japan declared war on the U.S. on the day of the strikes, but the official declaration did not arrive in Washington until afterwards.
The Pearl Harbor attack gave Roosevelt the leverage he needed to push for the U.S. to formally enter World War II — allowing him to join ally Great Britain in fighting Adolf Hitler’s march through Europe — with the House and Senate approving declarations of war against Japan by margins of 388-1 and 82-0, respectively.
Less than four years later, Japan would accept America’s demand for “unconditional surrender” after the U.S. dropped the first two — and thus far the only two — nuclear weapons to be used in combat in separate strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Japanese government has never formally apologized for the infamous sneak attack, though one of Takaichi’s predecessors — the late Shinzo Abe — delivered a speech expressing "sincere and everlasting condolences" to the American and Japanese personnel killed in the fighting that day during a 2016 visit to the Pearl Harbor memorial above the wreck of Arizona.
Abe, who was assassinated in July 2022, said at the time that the U.S. and Japan “must never repeat the horrors of war again.”
More About Advertising opined on the Roserrection of WPP, including WPP CEO Cindy Rose’s grand vision for cultivating a culture for the White holding company.
It’s a safe bet the culture will lack cultural competence, as Rose has not addressed the historic exclusivity at WPP.
The Elevate 28 three-year scheme can’t reverse over 35 years of systemic racism.
Can Cindy Rose unearth a winning culture for WPP?
By Stephen Foster
WPP’s Cindy Rose succeeded in calming some first night investor nerves with a well-received presentation yesterday, outlining her Elevate 28 three-year plan to return what it is still one of the world’s biggest ad holding companies to profitable health.
Key to this, though, is that it’s not going to be a holding company anymore. Such entities, Rose says, have no ‘culture’ and she wants the new integrated WPP to have one, a bit like a new PE teacher coming in and calling for more team spirit.
Culture is one of those words that forever catches out adland, used for all sorts of purposes it was never intended. In Sir Martin Sorrell’s day WPP had a very pronounced culture: it was going to be the biggest because big attracted big (advertisers that is.) Just as such outfits do in law, accountancy or consultancy. But most high growth, high pressure businesses hit the buffers at some stage and WPP duly did.
Rose’s more measured approach may work in today’s market; it should at least stabilise things which is the driving idea for year one of Elevate 28.
Will WPP staffers buy into it, in particular those from the creative side of the organisation who are now, Rose says — although not overtly — to be led by media. Historically creative types have rather looked down on their media colleagues, including at WPP. Key to Rose’s fortunes is the relationship between her and WPP Media boss Brian Lesser. He’s over there and she’s here, which may be a problem.
Fear, of course, is a great motivator and with AI stalking the corridors of the world’s people-led businesses WPP staff will be grateful to be still employed, albeit in a much-changed organisation. But that won’t last forever.
Rose still has to reveal the detail of what she’s planning and some of it, particularly cost cuts, will be painful. She will need to announce the regional bosses in creative, media and elsewhere and those choices may not be popular.
But this AI fan still manages to come across as human and that’s a start.
NADI Marketing presents “9 Ways to Celebrate Black History Month: Campaigns & Partnerships Ideas for Sustainable Brands”—comprised of 5 BHM Campaign Ideas and 4 Strategic Partnerships for BHM.
It’s a cornucopia of competent creative conception for the culturally clueless—likely delivered for crumbs.
