Marketers know that viral marketing can be a powerful tool, but sometimes it can work in reverse. That's what happened to athletic shoemaker Adidas after Asian Americans started spreading the word
over blogs and through e-mail lists, alleging that artwork depicted on the company's Y-1 Huff shoe was racist. Adidas said it would pull the shoe off the market after the complaints became too loud
and numerous to ignore. The sneaker has a cartoonish image of an Asian person on the tongue of the shoe with a bowl haircut, very slanted eyes and a "pig nose," which sparked talk among the
Asian-American community, said Vincent Pan, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco-based civil rights group. As word spread online and in news reports, he said, "there
was a lot of negative reaction all over the place. There was a lot of conversation online. It was organic, it wasn't coordinated or organized by any one group." An Adidas spokeswoman said Friday that
most of the shoes, which retailed for $250 a pair, had likely already been sold. Pan acknowledged that the company had responded to the Asian American communities' concerns, but suggested that the
sneaker giant donate the proceeds from the shoe to groups that promote racial understanding.
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