Brilliant Nike Marketing Strategy re: Jordan Crawford

So you are looking down the road at your next big marketing project, a kid named Jordan Crawford, and you need to get his name out there, get him in the market’s consciousness before he goes pro. You know this about the market:

1) It loves access to a secret
Like sex tapes or hidden cameras. People are voyeurs by natures, creepy little Chuck Berry’s desperate for access to a peephole. 

2) They have tremendous faith in the Internet
The belief that the Internet is a “wild west” not yet controlled by corporate or government interests means that people think that they might be allowed to see something that those in authority do not want them to see.  This “scandal” thrives on the fact that people have been searching for this video.  
 
3) A great many people dislike LeBron James
So much so that daring to compare him to Michael Jordan still puts you in great danger of being shot in certain circles. Many believe him to be an over-marketed Nike mascot who gets away with cheating on a regular basis. They actively want to believe that a kid, particularly one named “Jordan”, dunked on James.

4) There is a lot of sports-withdrawal going on right now
If you are not into baseball this time of year sucks. You want to go into football mode, but you are scared. You go into it too soon and you have to suffer till the season starts. You don’t even want to start thinking about basketball yet. Still any little bit of news grabs and holds your attention, like news of the girl that dumped you a decade ago. You pay attention even though you know it’s pointless.

5) Sports-fanship is largely about recalling things
What happened in such and such a season, the names of the positions, plays, colleges, who got drafted where, by whom, and in what year. Nothing is more important than knowing the name of people. It’s hard if these people are from a different country, or culture with strange names, but that just makes it more of a challenge, something for the true sports geek to feel proud of. This gets Nike and Lebron James even more deeply implanted in the media than they were previously.

It’s easy to fabricate a story like this
Seriously, the whole thing is about tantalizing rumor that seems to make somebody look bad, which, of course, is the most tantalizing kind of rumor. It has elements that have to get you hooked but that are not really verifiable. Meaning they can be easily disproved and dismissed at a later point. Whether or not you actually ever view the footage you know the name Jordan Crawford.