Letters

Account Planning
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners won the gold at the 1998 APG-U.S. Account Planning Awards with a Nike campaign based on a fictional girls’ basketball team (the Charlestown Cougars) shot in a documentary style. Goodby, Silverstein reports that the campaign was so successful, teenage girls were asking, “The Cougars are real, right?” [“Hoop Dreams,” July 13]. I wonder how these girls would feel if they knew they had been duped.
My questions to the industry: Is this type of “created reality” acceptable when it results in misunderstanding? Does the campaign honestly meet the objective of reconnecting Nike “with consumers at the most pure level”? Despite the fact that to win the award the work had to be reviewed by some of the finest strategic minds in the U.S.,