Toning shoes are the fastest-growing category in the footwear business. Essentially, these shoes are aimed at women with the promise to help get rid of cellulite. Following MBT’s success, both Sketchers and Reebok copycatted the shoe and total revenues for this sector will be about $1 billion in 2010.Feeling the heat, Nike has responded directly to the toning shoe craze with the kind of ballsy, no-nonsense ad we’ve come to expect from Wieden + Kennedy. The ad asserts, “The shoe works if you do." It’s a great line, no doubt about it, and very fitting for the brand but it appears to have ruffled the feathers of Barbara Lippert who recently skewered Nike’s effort in a recent Adweek column. Lippert claims that the ad is “Smug and defensive.” And “The Church of the Holy Swoosh is being holier-than-thou and the result is off-putting at best.”
Ironically, in trying to make the case that Nike has missed the point, perhaps it is Lippert who has missed the point. Sweatshops and child exploitation aside, Nike is a brand about achieving results through hard work, not quick fixes. And they have a point. According to Dr David Johnson, orthopedic surgeon at St Mary's Hospital in Bristol "The claims as to assisting posture, back, hip and knee problems are not supported by evidence or any good rational explanation." Furthermore fitness experts like Laura Williams reject any idea that the shoes help reduce cellulite.
There’s a reason toning shoes are doing great business. It’s the same reason diet pills do great business not to mention countless absurd contraptions featured on late night infomercials do great business. The promise of a quick fix sells. But that doesn’t equate to any of these products working or even being healthy for that matter.
Nike’s ad is obviously not what millions of women with miniature canoes strapped to their feet want to hear, and that’s exactly the point. The truth hurts but it’s also the only path to proven results.
