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Nike Lifts LeBron IV With Multimedia Campaign

The Nike Air Zoom LeBron IV--the latest generation of athletic shoe endorsed by Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James--is getting a hefty sendoff this week in both traditional and nontraditional media. James appears as different sides of his own personality in the campaign.

The launch includes the first episode of ESPN's "Sports-Center" to be sponsored by a single advertiser (at 6 p.m. tomorrow); the distribution of 400,000 copies of DVDs about the making of the shoe and the ad campaign; saturation advertising on espn.com and mtv.com; a so-called pop-up retail store in Manhattan; video clips appearing as short programs on the MTV2 cable network; and a retro-chic neon billboard near Madison Square Garden that will show a continuously dunking Mr. James. The campaign also features television commercials and print ads.

The budget for the LeBron IV campaign is estimated at two to three times the nearly $1 million Nike spent last fall for ads in major media to introduce the LeBron III.

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