Remembering the man whose star-studded '90s Nike commercials 'revolutionized' TV advertising

As It Happens6:19Jim Riswold's star-studded '90s Nike commercials 'revolutionized' TV advertising, says friend

Jim Riswold "made advertising fun," says his longtime friend and colleague.

Riswold, an adman whose celebrity-fronted Nike commercials in the '90s are credited with changing the face of TV advertising as we know it, died on Aug. 9 at his Portland, Ore., home after two decades of struggling with cancer. He was 66.

"He totally revolutionized this industry because he made you want to watch a commercial," said Mira Kaddoura, founder of the ad company Red & Co. "He made it into entertainment, where before that, it was very much trying to hard-sell you something."

He is best known for his work at the ad firm Wieden + Kennedy, where he created his long-running "Mike and Spike" Air Jordans campaign featuring basketball legend Michael Jordan and filmmaker Spike Lee, and the "Bo Knows" Nike cross-trainers campaign starring baseball and football player Bo Jackson.  

Those campaigns "redrew the playing field for product endorsements and propelled athletic footwear into the cultural stratosphere," according Riswold's obituary in the New York Times.

Riswold's family announced his death on Instagram with a simple image of white text on a black background reading: "Okay, I'm dead now."

Kaddoura spoke to As It Happens host Nil Köksal about her friend and former boss's creative legacy. Here is part of their conversation. 

What his children posted from him to announce his passing … says a lot about who he was. He was your first boss, if I'm not mistaken, in advertising. Was that Jim on display from the first moment you met him? 

Absolutely. That was him. I mean, I keep on saying that he basically produced his death. He basically is making an art show out of his death. 

He's just like that. He's just constantly trying to create things in the world. And he did it until his last breath. 

I think that's really how he survived 20 years with cancer. He basically was creating constantly, and that kept him alive. 

Where do you think … that boldness, that brash attitude and that openness came from? 

I started out at Wieden + Kennedy for 10 years. And I think what I realized is [company founders] David Kennedy and Dan Wieden created a place where they allowed people to be themselves and to have a voice. And I think that's what happened to Riswold. He suddenly had a place that allowed him to kind of lean into his quirkiness, into his creativity. 

Is there a piece of advice he gave you as you worked with him, and then became his friend, that stays with you today? 

I've had a different relationship with Jim over the years, over two decades. He started out as my boss, and then I kind of grew up at Wieden + Kennedy. And then when I left, I started my own agency, Red & Co., and he was very much a champion of me doing that and supported me. And even though he was my boss at Wieden + Kennedy, I ended up hiring him, too, at Red & Co.

So we've had this like Ping-Pong of a relationship, and then, through that, developed a really strong friendship. 

Through all these years, I think what he really taught me is the power of creation, and especially as he got sick over and over again, you know, this idea that we could almost fight death by creating all the time. 

He taught me to take risks. He taught me to be brave. He taught me to make things even if no one likes them. You know, we're so preoccupied with what other people are going to think. 

I created this show and platform Into Healing and then he reached out to me to be on it.

This is for your podcast, just a few weeks before he died. 

Yes, exactly. So he reached out to me just a few weeks before he passed, and he said, "I want to be on this." And I'm like, "OK you can barely breathe, but let's do it."

And he came in with all his tubes and his oxygen tanks and, you know, just that attitude of like: Make things. Make things in the world. Like, be part of the people making things. 

Especially, I feel, in the face of death, in the face of destruction, like, being those people that make things that want to contribute to life is such a powerful message and lesson. 

I read that he could also be a pain — and other people have phrased it differently — in the office environment. 

He's a very polarizing person. Like, there's people that love him and there's people that hate him. And I think it's because he has a very hard exterior.

Advertising … creates a little bit of a hardening. And I think, you know, once you got past his hard exterior, there was a softy in there. But, you know, it took a little bit of work to get there. Yeah. 

You have many, many memories to draw from. In all the years you worked together and were friends, is there one that you'd like to leave our listeners with? 

He revolutionized the advertising industry. But just personally, for me, he was a very generous human.

Five years ago, my dad got a very rare colon cancer diagnosis. And I knew [Riswold] was the person to ask because he had had cancer so many times, and he was the first text I sent asking him if he would connect me with his oncologist. 

And within, like, hours, I was connected into this whole, you know, amazing board of colon cancer specialists. And then they ended up taking on my dad's case … and five years later, my dad's still alive. 

That's the story that I'll carry with me forever, that, you know, when I needed him, he was there.