Wanna shoot some nudie hoops? I'm off to a BBQ with my family in 10 mins so I'll rant as quick as I can. Moments ago I glanced over a print ad from Nike (click here for the detailed view!).

So is Nike just asking us to join in the celebration of a new store in Moulin Rouge country?

I have lived and breathed design commercially for 20 years now and I can assure you they are communicating far more than that. How about: ‘Sick of the mundane? Living an average boring existence? Ever had a desire to do something radical, irreverent, naughty? It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks - you go ahead and ‘JUST DO IT’ - you’ll feel liberated, aspired, sexually free, and desirable (only with Nikes on of course).’

Yes, I get the brand’s story of freedom, aspiration and superiority that’s all great. However there is a distinct difference between inspirational living and encouraging us to act on primal instincts without reservation or inhibition.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone just acted on their feelings without restraint or concern for their actions?

I’m sure we would find ourselves living amongst the highest rate of divorce, broken homes and marriages. We would witness an increase in rape, abuse and sexual crimes. Hmm, oh that’s right. We have already achieved all those aspiring milestones by ‘JUST DOING IT’!

Recently I watched a documentary on the sexual trafficking crisis in Cambodia. I observed that one of the paedophiles caught preying on children was an overweight middle aged doctor from the US wearing a pair of Nike shoes. Thankfully he is now in prison, however I now wonder if both he and his victims are glad he ‘JUST DID IT’ Even the social demi-god and consequent ‘SOCIAL ARCHITECT’ Oprah Winfrey, in her widely circulated ‘O’ magazine, posted the mantra of ‘do what you feel’. Now to be fair, these statements are not meant to be a licence for destruction, but no disclaimer is given, except maybe the axiom of ‘as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else’…. But it invariably will.

Let’s, for a moment, pretend the ‘JUST DO IT ‘ and ‘DO WHAT YOU FEEL’ axioms became our ethical and moral basis… Let’s look at some examples. Mother Teresa, ‘DO WHAT YOU FEEL’! What are some of the outcomes? How about Osama Bin Laden ‘just do it’! Hmmm? How about rapists or paedophiles ‘do what you feel’? I think you get the point.

Am I being prudish? Well as a passionate father of two daughters (impatiently waiting to go and visit their cousins at the BBQ - which I’m now late to), I just can't help but feel for the dad of the female model pictured in the advert. He knows that thousands (maybe millions) who have seen the advert are all wondering what the view is like from the free throw line? I’m getting very tired of seeing thousands of sexualised representations of young people circulating in society. Movies, TV, music videos and advertising increasingly rely on images of young people dressing and behaving in a provocative manner and singing lyrics of sexual frustration, promise and even loss to attract all ages. Even now with the ‘TWEENIE’ demographic and younger, a new genre of perversion has been coined - ‘CULTURAL PAEDOPHILIA’. Now, thanks to sexually exploitative marketing, the average person is ‘forced’ to look on children in a sexual way, whether they wanted to or not! Developed and sustained by corporations, these images are utilised for the sole purpose of selling products.

Our consumption of these images is often passive and uncritical; we’re not even aware we are doing it. Instead of remaining in the realm of visual fiction, these images creep into the everyday language, behaviour and dress codes of our youth who are desperate to grow up, and see these images as blueprints or templates for their identity.

Sex may not be overt (though it often is – look at music clips), but it’s implicit in the campaign: buy this and you’ll be more sexually attractive - to either gender - make your friends jealous and be popular. Don’t believe for a moment that this is accidental. On the contrary, it’s a deliberate, carefully planned strategy designed with target market knowledge and for the purpose of making money. Large corporations, such as Nike and MTV, hire groups of savvy, mid twenty-to-thirty year olds whose sole purpose within the organisation is to discover and invent trends. Given the title of ‘cool hunters’ or ‘merchants of cool’, they carefully interview selected adolescents within their own homes in an attempt to understand what makes them tick. Then they go ahead and create the campaign. This relentless pursuit is much more about manufacturing consensus than merely discovering it. In this light, these agencies are at best ‘WORLD VIEW MANIPULATORS’ and at worst ‘SOUL PREDATORS’. By that I mean they care not for the individuals psycho-spiritual wellbeing, rather only how they can extract every last dollar, disposable or not, from these malleable souls.

A recent ACNeilsen report listed Desperate Housewives as the most-watched television show for nine to 12 year olds. When exposure to sexually explicit material starts so young, what does it take to entertain a teenager?

I don’t have a quick fix solution – except to stay STOP!
However by acknowledging that the corporate hijacking of our youth’s sexuality is a problem, we’ve taken the first step towards countering it. In the end it’s values that drive brand communications. It would be prudent of us to discover these values. For example maybe one of Nikes core brand values is to exploit. In which case their history of engaging in sweatshop labour and sexually driven advertising is working beautifully. That would explain, at least in part, why they are so successful (in monetary terms).

The velocity of life now demands that brands, more than ever are used to express individuality, pride, loyalty and ownership. Competition for recognition is as ancient as the heraldic banners on a medieval battlefield. No longer limited by physical terrain, managing perception now extends to cyberspace and beyond. The battle for physical territory has now evolved into a competition for a share of the mind. Someone once said, ‘a strong brand is like a friend.’ If you think of your favourite brand and stop to acknowledge your feelings for it, you begin to recognise how true that insight actually is.

You can tell a lot about a person by the friends he or she hangs out with. Likewise the brands we choose to engage with make a clear statement about who we are and what we value.

Can you articulate your values?

Do you buy brands that share your values?

What sneakers are you wearing now?

Written by Ray Bull, Bull Art
Extracts from 'Corporate Kidnapping' Dr Karen Brooks
University of the Sunshine Coast