Most people have seen the picture to the right, where Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is seen recovering in his hospital bed, showing a recent paper to indentify that he is indeed alive after intestinal surgery. One of the most glaring items in the picture, though, is the Adidas logo that's on Castro's red, white and blue warmup jacket. It's a really obvious case of what sports uniform guru Paul Lukas would derisively call "logo creep," but it doesn't seem to be one that any athletic company would want to be associated with.So how do the folks at Adidas feel about this picture? They're ambivalent, according to TheNew York Times. They're proud of the fact that they outfit the Cuban national teams, especially when they win Olympic medals or other international competitions, but they don't really seem concerned that someone much of the world thinks is evil is wearing their gear. "We don't really look at it as anything," a spokesman told the Times. "It's not a positive, not a negative."
The article goes on to talk about other cases of what they call "inadvertent product placement," like when Ford Bronco sales rose after O.J. Simpson rode one in his infamous car chase, and when Bill Clinton left Air Force One carrying a copy of The Economist.
1. A friend of mine sent that pic out in an e-mail last week proposing that it was Photoshopped. One of the guys on the distribution replied with "I don't care if it's fake or not. Now, where can I get that warm-up suit?"
In the words of Dave Barry, I'm not making that up.
Posted at 12:13PM on Aug 22nd 2006 by unimental