Bo Knows
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"Bo Knows" was an
Jackson was the first athlete in the modern era to play professional baseball and football in the same year. He was a suitable spokesman for Nike's shoe geared toward an athlete engaged in more than one sport or with little time between activities to switch to sport-specific footwear.
Original ad
The original "Bo Knows" ad was a
Subsequent ads
Later "Bo Knows" ads saw Jackson trying his hand at cycling (in 2012, he launched a Gran Fondo in Alabama after the Alabama tornadoes of March 2012 sponsored by Nike), soccer (featuring Ian Rush), cricket (featuring Ian Botham), surfing, weightlifting, auto racing, and horse racing as a jockey. A revision of the original "Bo Knows" ad ended with Jackson having learned the guitar and sharing licks with Bo Diddley.
In one version of the commercial, after Jackson is shown trying several activities, a confused Sonny Bono walks into the shot and says (playing off the tag line), "I thought this was another Bono's commercial."
In another, Bo Jackson grew frustrated with an over-the-top musical number and walked off the set. George Foreman, sensing an opportunity to seize the spotlight, took his place in the musical number.
The ad campaign was very successful, making cross-trainers Nike's number-two line behind its famous basketball shoes. It was subsequently parodied by the ProStars cartoon, which featured likenesses of Jackson, Wayne Gretzky, and Michael Jordan. While the character based on Jackson spoke normally, he would say in the third person "Bo knows [____]" when asked or prompted to do something in almost every episode.
There was also a public service announcement variant encouraging students to stay in school, which had multiple copies of Bo appearing simultaneously humorously discussing how Bo knows various academic subjects.
The "Bo Knows" campaign also appeared in Madden NFL 22.
In popular culture
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In the song "
A Sesame Street sketch (1991) where Jackson demonstrated various things that the show teaches (letters, numbers, opposites), with the Sesame Street Muppets making "Bo Knows" comments in between.[2]
The single Here Comes the Hotstepper by raggae musician Ini Kamoze includes the lyric "I know what Bo don't know".
In a Homestar Runner short from 2008, two characters come across a very rotten Easter egg with "BO KNOWS EASTER EGGS" written on it, implying it has been there for several years.[3]
References
- ^ "A Tribe Called Quest (Ft. Leaders of the New School) – Scenario".
- ^ "Sesame Street - Bo Knows". YouTube.
- ^ The Brothers Chaps (24 March 2008). "Rotten Eggs". Homestar Runner. Retrieved 5 April 2023.
- Adweek citation as one of the best TV commercials of the 1990s.
- ""Say It Ain't Bo!", Entertainment Weekly, July 27, 1990 (retrieved June 8, 2007).
- "The Sneaker Wars: Going Toe-to-Toe" by Bernice Kanner, in The Super Bowl of Advertising: How the Commercials Won the Game, Bloomberg Press, 2004. (PDF file)