New Delhi, April 28 -- Good marketing can be edgy or cheeky, even provocative. It should have a point of view and be memorable. What it should not do is shame or insult customers.

Nike seems to have missed this lesson from Marketing 101. In the run up to the Boston Marathon on Monday, an advertisement in the window of a store along the city's Newbury Street read "Runners welcome, walkers tolerated."

The copy came across as completely at odds with the company's "Just Do It" tagline, a call to action that in the company's own words is "a challenge to start, to try, to move forward even when it's hard."

This was just one ad, directed at a very specific market, but it seized the news cycle because it underlines Nike's struggles with its br...