Marketing To The Irish Via Paddywhackery

Some will call it Guinness with training wheels, but you can walk into an Irish-themed establishment in the States and order a mixture of Guinness stout and Bass ale. It's called a "Black and Tan".

Naturally, when Nike decided to market a new range of runners to the Irish market, they picked up on the color of the shoes and called the dark ones "Guinness" and the black/brown ones "Black and Tan".

Brilliant, Nike.

Did your marketing geniuses never think to research the term "Black and Tan" before pasting it on a shoe?

They learned nothing from Ben and Jerry's fiasco in 2006, when they named an ice cream flavor after one of the most notorious paramilitary groups that ever wore a British uniform. Nor did anyone go to their Netflix account to watch Michael Collins, where the Black and Tans figured prominently. And not in a good way.

The shoe is being released today, compounding the injury with St. Patrick's Day only a week away.

It's a case of paddywhackery, in which someone who isn't familiar with Irish history takes a page from the marketer's guidebook and creates a sales campaign that is clearly based on ignorance.

Unless the Nike marketing team is made up of unionists who think the Black and Tans were the victims of bad press and Irish-Catholic thuggery, it's a really, really, really bad name for a shoe.

We should be getting an apology before long....definitely before next Saturday, when Irish eyes will be smiling and Irish shoe buyers will be aggravated by the insensitivity of a shoe company with its knowledge of all things Irish coming from the decor of Bennigans.