Kenneth Neal, Sr.

When you think of puppets, Sesame Street probably comes to mind. Characters like Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Burt, Ernie, and my favorite Cookie Monster hold fond memories. This show has been around for ages and continues to be a popular learning tool for the pre-school set. That is why the Nike commercial with Kobe Bryant and Lebron James basketball puppets is so intriguing and effective. Instead of targeting kids, Nike uses the puppets to target the young, athletic adult population to market their Nike brand basketball shoes. The puppets first catch your attention with their resemblance to the famous basketball stars and use comedy to maintain audience attention.

The original commercial was so successful that it had several spin-offs with the characters doing some of the craziest things. Silly things like babysitting a very talkative child, leaping into a moving car and mimicking Lebron James’ famous pre-game ritual, clapping powder into the stands.

Nike gets a “B+” from me for its creativity because I feel that the commercial could have been improved drastically if the voices of the characters were actually the real Kobe Bryant and Lebron James. The puppets voiceovers were done by comedians David Allen Grier and Kenan Thompson. Although they did a great job with the voices of Kobe and Lebron in the commercial, I can’t help but think of the famous song by Marvin Gaye and Tami Terrell that states, “there’s nothing like the real thing, Baby!”

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Photograph Credit:
Sabrina Segal