Colin Kaepernick’s Nike ad wins an Emmy for outstanding commercial

It’s been more than a year since Nike’s controversial ad featuring Colin Kaepernick premiered to both praise and outrage. Now the commercial, which encourages viewers to “dream crazy,” has been honored with an Emmy Award.

The “Dream Crazy” ad, created by the Wieden+Kennedy ad agency and produced by Park Pictures, won the Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Commercial on Saturday.

While Kaepernick narrates the commercial, several other star athletes also appear in the inspiring 2-minute piece, including Serena Williams and LeBron James. Many viewers, however, focused on Kaepernick, whose sideline protests against racial injustice during NFL games garnered widespread attention — including negative attention from President Trump.

While the ad prompted some people to call for a boycott and burn their Nike apparel in protest, Nike shares actually surged 36% on the year. The run-up included a nearly 5% increase since Nike’s announcement of the campaign on Labor Day 2018, which added nearly $6 billion to the company’s market value.

Though he hasn’t been signed by an NFL team, Kaepernick continued to make an impact at Nike. In July, the company walked back its decision to release a red, white and blue “Betsy Ross” edition of its Air Max 1 sneakers, reportedly following concerns raised by Kaepernick about glorifying the era of slavery.

Now, a year after Kaepernick debuted as the face of Nike’s “Just Do It” 30th anniversary campaign, the ad is an Emmy winner — joining the likes of NASA’s InSight mars landing and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” in picking up awards for outstanding artistic and technical achievement in television.

The Creative Arts Emmys also feature categories like “outstanding single-camera picture editing for a drama series,” and “outstanding casting for a drama series” — both of which went to HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

In fact, “Game of Thrones” took home the most Creative Arts Emmys this year — a whopping 25. Netflix followed close behind with 23 Emmys, including “outstanding creative achievement in interactive media within a scripted program,” which went to the interactive “Black Mirror” movie, “Bandersnatch.”

The more specialized awards show precedes the better-known prime-time Emmy Awards, which will air on September 22 on Fox.