Media and marketing giant Nike,

after establishing a level of

media saturation and mindshare

so great as to make the use of

either copy or alphanumeric

identification in its ads

redundant, will in 1997 shed the

last remaining vestige of

symbolic language. Dumping the

"swoosh," the

shoe/sport/lifestyle purveyors

declare their new corporate logo

to be a "space." A

multi-million-dollar Wieden and

Kennedy campaign, centering on

lavishly blank magazine inserts

and television commericials

consisting of 30-second segments

of white noise, has

unprecedented success: Polls

show 17-to-24-year-olds

overwhelmingly identify pictures

of white walls, un-used tissue

and clear blue sky as "Nike." In

December, the company is named

Advertising Age's "Marketer of

the Year" for the second year in

a row. Shortly thereafter, they

are named God.