Shoe tangle

Sketchers USA Inc. just recently settled over a recent advertising campaign that came under harsh criticism. The shoe company was claiming that their new toning shoe helped build muscle and shed fat. The $40 million class-action lawsuit was centered around a flashy commercial featuring Brooke Burke and Kim Kardashian.  In the commercial Kardashian and Burke sport a variety of Sketchers brands, including Shape-Ups, Resistance Runners, Podded Sole Shoes, and Tone-Ups.  The class action lawsuit was settled out of federal court in Louisville, KY and combined the cases of about 70 people seeking damages. Part of that final agreement was that Sketchers was no longer allowed to run the advertisement.  The lawyers involved will split about $5 million while most consumers were entitled to a maximum repayment for their purchase.

I don’t really blame Sketchers for coming up with a decent ad campaign to sell their product, but their legal team should definitely have seen this coming. To date, humanity has not found a better way to build strength and lose fat than proper diet and exercise. This is something that a lot of people are failing to realize. There are no magic shoes to make you look like Brooke Burke, but if there were I’d be handing them out on the street corner.  Perhaps if people weren’t so gullible big settlements like this wouldn’t be so prominent.  Unfortunately for the shoe company it might take Sketchers a long time to heal, so to speak.