Social rebels like new Nike pitchman Colin Kaepernick come and go, but Port Covington will be around forever, with or without Nike rival Under Armour's corporate identity. Nike's new ad campaign has gotten massive buzz, but buzz is all it is. In contrast, Port Covington is a real place where Under Armour has made a billion dollar bet with somebody's money that it can vault itself to the top of the sportswear world and turn Baltimore around at the same time.
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| Colin Kaepernick sacrificed pro football for social reform. Then Nike hired him to sell shoes and sportswear. So rival Under Armour should double down on Port Covington and Baltimore. |
Pundits speculate on how Nike's bet on Kaepernick will affect its dominant but dormant brand, the similarly languishing National Football League that he sued for conspiring against him, and oh, maybe promote human equality a little bit as well.
But Baltimore is an actual epicenter of all the social problems that Kaepernick purports to stand against. And Under Armour has put down roots in Baltimore, betting its entire corporate identity on this place. Baltimore has thousands of Colin Kaepernicks, just without Nike contracts.
The only problem is that Under Armour's massive bet was sooooo three years ago. Since then, Under Armour has merely hunkered down in Port Covington's abandoned Sam's Club big box store behind a massive security barrier, while the site's best piece of land was used to build founder Kevin Plank's whiskey distillery side-project. They also tried to sell Amazon on a less desirable property now occupied by the Baltimore Sun, but to no avail.
And the rest of Baltimore has merely gone on its separate way. Under Armour couldn't resolve the Freddie Gray riots or stop the police from "taking a knee". And Under Armour's corporate value took a major hit as well.
Similarly, Kaepernick's one-man "take a knee" campaign also languished until Publicity-Mill-in-Chief Donald Trump made him one of his issues, which of course, constitutes the publicity pinnacle. Only then did many fellow football players from all over the NFL start "taking a knee" during the National Anthem in emulation of Kaepernick. That is what has kept Kaepernick in the news. Nike isn't quite as big as Trump, but they'd sure like to be.
At this rate, one wonders whether even Impeachment might be good for the Trump brand, regardless of how well it works for the country. After all, Impeachment didn't hurt Bill Clinton.
Meanwhile, Port Covington has become just another big real estate venture being quietly pitched to various developers, just like Trump did back in the old days before starring in NBC's "The Apprentice". It's the same "Art of the Deal". Oh, the irony.
The bottom line from all this is an old trite tried-and-true one: "There is no such thing as bad publicity". The truth of that trope has certainly been debated many times since PT Barnum allegedly first said it, but now that sportswear giant Nike is betting on it, Under Armour needs to listen.
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| The planned Port Covington development just below Interstate 95 would become a new downtown, with Under Armour's corporate campus on the southern tip at the water's edge. |
"Just Do It"
So here is what Under Armour should do: Bet on Port Covington and Baltimore in a big way. Not with hundreds of millions of dollars of future Tax Increment Financing money, but with something even bigger: The magic of hype.
Treat Baltimore as Under Armour's social consciousness cauldron and treat Port Covington as one and the same. Social issues are cool and so are we! Port Covington is thus a cool place where we can all be close to the cutting edge. But not too close. And of course, we'll all be wearing Under Armour from head to toe...
Thus, Under Armour's plan for Port Covington now appears to be more useful as a publicity icon and less so as an actual plan.
And the real plan will be whatever actually gets built and how it actually benefits the city and its citizens as a whole.
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