The New York Times [REGISTRATION] notes along with many others the debut of Nike's "Art of Speed" weblog, a sponsored-content version of Gawker that is wrapped in highly attractive graphics and certainly helps to up the buzz ante for the Nike brand very cost-effectively: kudos to Nick Denton for landing a good assignment for his star blogging team. The brand association with the content is quite loose - about akin to the correlation of Milton Berle and the sponsor of his Texaco Star Theater show in early television - but like those early entertainment shows it indicates that major brands hard pressed in typical media outlets to get a loyal audience are finding sponsored content of in new outlets to be far more cost-effective in getting both message and image out to affluent leading-edge markets. As noted in our earlier news analysis, weblog promoters such as Denton acting as talent development agents concentrating on developing a capable stable of writers ensures that those wanting to spin weblog content into their own content fabrics like DJs at a night club - BJs, as we like to think of them - will have a steady flow of quality content. Nice work if you can find it...