With Leather

The sneaker endorsement is a precious thing in this world of professional athletics that we see today. Most participants in pro football, basketball and baseball are happy to simply have free shoes brought to their lockers before gameday, if they get any sort of footwear arrangement at all. So one can appreciate the oddity of having a fictitious ex-athlete as the frontman of any brand’s ad campaign, because that just doesn’t happen.

Matt Murphy worked for one of the most innovative advertising agencies in America at Wieden+Kennedy. That’s the same firm that jettisoned so many Nike ads into our collective consciousnesses. But Murphy had a different job at 72andSunny, an LA-based ad firm that he joined last year: take one of the most...