Bo knows advertising. Wieden & Kennedy's Nike ads, featuring multitalented baseball and football star Bo Jackson, stretched the boundaries of jock worship and neatly crossed the bridge from sports marketing into pop culture. The eight spots helped build a Bo Jackson myth, then deconstructed that legend and found humor in chastising those who got caught up in it, all the while peddling high-tech, cross-training shoes.

The first Jackson ads were part of the 1988 debut of Nike's famous tagline, "Just do it." A trio of lighthearted spots showed Jackson cycling, running and playing basketball. The next year the shop upped the ante, coming up with the line "Bo knows" and tapping musician Bo Diddley for the clever twist, "Bo doesn't know Diddley."

Creative director Jim Riswold, copywriter on the campaign, remembers the Bo Diddley idea came from barroom banter among agency creatives and Nike's then marketing director Tom Clarke regarding famous figures with the name "Bo." (Other possibilities: Bo Derek and Little Bo Peep).

Overnight, the label for Jackson's mystique became a phenomenon in its own right. "Bo knows" appeared on hats, T-shirts and even in other ads. In 1990, Jackson's hip injury changed the pro-Bo climate, but not much. "Nike and the agency realized we were on this train and had to figure out how to get off before it crashed," says Riswold. "We had to derail the myth and bring it all back to earth." The resulting ad, which broke the following year, was arguably the best Bo ad ever. It starts with Jackson wearing a tuxedo in a campy Las Vegas-style stage production crooning a generic-sounding tune. He leaves the set abruptly with the words, "I'm not an actor. I'm an athlete." He steps through the television set into an ordinary American living room, commenting, "I've got rehab to do." When the family's youngster recites a line from other Nike commercials to him, Jackson retorts, "You watch too much TV, kid." The spot then shows Jackson seriously cross-training, but the Las Vegas song keeps playing in the background. Finally, he screams at a screen with the Nike logo: "You know I don't have time for this." With that, boxer George Foreman pops up in a tux, saying, "I do."

Directed by Joe Pytka, written by Riswold, and art directed by Darryl McDonald and David Jenkins, the spot provided a strong commentary on sports celebrity and the perils of overexposure. Given the current backlash against sports commercialism, ad observers say in some ways, the work was way ahead of its time. As sports enthusiasts know, Jackson's injury worsened despite his rehab efforts and eventually he was forced to retire.

In the meantime, Wieden created two more rehab-oriented ads. One used comic Denis Leary, who sarcastically advised viewers to stop asking about his hip.

"It was quite a story," says Riswold, talking about Jackson's unusual place in athletic history, his sense of promise, his fame and his physical problems. "We knew we had to do Bo's ads based on what was really happening to him." The events in Bo's career "gave us plenty to work with. And we knew we had to make ads that only he could do. I think that's why people understood that this campaign and Nike stood for something."

Joan Voight