The Tanning of America (27 page)

Paul Fireman needed little convincing. Between everything we'd already accomplished with his “music shoes” and in making RBK a reality, he saw only the upsides of an endorsement deal with Jay-Z. The decision wasn't brain surgery. Jay-Z, referred to by many as the CEO of hip-hop, had one of the longest careers as a rap artist of anyone in the record business. By 2010, he would have sold forty million albums worldwide and would hold the record of having the most number one albums on
Billboard
's Top 200 of any recording artist in history. If that wasn't compelling enough, the point I made to Paul was that the sneakers we had the chance to develop for Jay-Z were about pure, unadulterated cool. Sticking with my mantra, I said, “We should make a sneaker for the kid who doesn't want to jump at all. He's just going to stand still and look good in his sneakers.” Period. The end.

Except for one detail. Jay-Z loved Nike. He followed the code that you had to represent what you love. Those Air Force 1s were part of his look that he had written about in his lyrics and that had been seen on his platform blasted far and wide to every corner of the earth. How would it be believable that he was now going to wear Reeboks? Then again, as I thought about it, the truth was that Nike had never returned any favors to Jay. Maybe they had sent him free sneakers or added a logo of his choice to the shoes. That was the standard practice of giving swag to celebrities, including even hip-hop artists who religiously wore Nike and made the brand a fortune. But as for seeking him out to do an endorsement deal and invest their brand's core equities in his brand, Nike had not shown that cultural curiosity to date.

One thing that I didn't have to worry about was whether Jay-Z's role as part-owner of Rocawear, a hip-hop fashion brand, would prevent him from partnering with RBK. Since Rocawear didn't make shoes, that wasn't a problem. In fact, the parent company never conceived that an artist—versus an athlete—could sell footwear, so they had placed no restrictions in that area. Once that was cleared up for me, Jay and I sat down to talk about what I had in mind. Without having the language yet to describe tanning, I presented it as an opportunity for him to connect to his audience, the multicultural mix of consumers who were urban/suburban/global—to let sneakers be cultural ambassadors, bridging differences.

This raised another unwritten law in the code of ethics that hip-hop had given us—and that is about the power to change in order to grow. This was not the first or last time that the theme of change would come up for Jay-Z. But that rainy day toward the end of 2002 when he came to my office and we talked about the possibilities, it made all the sense in the world to him. He knew that I wasn't going to let Reebok do anything that wouldn't align with his values. And the deal was simple. A fifty-fifty joint venture, it stipulated that the ownership of the logo and trademark would revert back to him over a period of time after the deal ended.

As an opportunity to grow and change, Jay-Z loved the idea of calling the sneaker line the S. Carter Collection—in tribute to his given name, Shawn Carter. Unlike with the Iverson line, RBK didn't have a sneaker in the pipe ready to be launched. We went through a period when I drove everyone crazy at the company turning down their ideas. Jay-Z was very Zen about the process until one day he announced, “I have an idea for the design.” It was inspired by a vintage Gucci sneaker. Even finding an original had not been easy. Sneaker aficionados hunt for them all over Europe and on eBay, and those who owned them back in the day, the illustrious and notorious ballers and dealers, usually had their Guccis stashed away, kept under lock and key. And when we all saw the prototype of the S. Carter, with just enough changed to make it new and authentic for RBK, it took our breath away.

We pulled out the stops, taking radical disruption marketing to places it had never been before. Nobody could even fathom that a sneaker could be marketed like a Hollywood blockbuster movie. On the global launch, we wrapped a private jet in S. Carter logos, took off from New York, and in the middle of the night landed at London's private airport near Heathrow, where hundreds of screaming fans and press stayed behind the velvet rope upon our arrival on the tarmac while throngs of reporters and photographers formed a press line to greet Jay-Z as he descended the steps of the plane, walked briskly to the podium in his S. Carters, spoke into the mic to greet the fans, and took questions from reporters about the new sneakers and whatever else was on his mind. Then he waved good-bye to the crowd, turned around, headed back up the steps and into the private jet, and we flew right on into the night to Italy—where even larger crowds awaited.

As Paul Fireman later recalled, Jay-Z's instinct not to overexpose the line but to keep the quantity down and elevate demand was so smart. The S. Carter thus became the fastest-selling shoe in Reebok's history. When we shot the commercial, Jay-Z appeared in it with 50 Cent, setting the stage for the audience and teasing it with the G-Unit, 50's sneaker, which hadn't even been released. And when the G-Unit did hit, forget it! It broke every sales record in the book. We were ready to follow yet again with rising star rapper/singer/producer/designer Pharrell Williams and his Ice Cream sneakers. Both the S. Carters and the G-Units outsold any of Reebok's athlete-endorsed sneaker lines of that period.

In August 2005 the announcement that Reebok had been acquired by Adidas-Salomon for over $3 billion was a storybook ending for the brand revival we had undertaken not too many years earlier. When Paul Fireman had returned to pick up the reins again at Reebok and we started working on it, stock shares had been trading at the sub-basement price of $6. At the time of the sale they were paid $59 per share. From as low as 6 percent of market share, Reebok had rebounded during Paul's oversight to as high as 17 and even 18 percent. Most analysts predicted that the Reebok and Adidas merger would be mutually advantageous, pointing, in fact, to the opportunities opened up through outreach to younger consumers through music. Interestingly enough, Nike was following suit with their own embrace of the sounds and rhythms of urban culture gone global. With Nike holding steady at about 36 percent of U.S. market share and a combined Adidas-Reebok still around 20 percent, analysts noted that the rising brand to watch was—guess who?—Puma, coming on strong. So much for the Sneaker Wars.

Whenever I am asked about what brands now fighting for survival in tough economic times really need to do, I point them toward all the choices that Paul Fireman made in building a company from the ground up and then re-empowering it even in the face of slim odds. If there is one particular rule that made the difference, it is the reality that doing business by the numbers, with focus
only
on the bottom line, is an economic death trap. During our work together, I distinctly recall that Jay Margolis, then president of Reebok, who had come aboard for that position after successes elsewhere, was resistant to many of the strategies that connected the company's fortunes to culture. Paul chose not to bank on what others insisted the trends were going to be, but instead focused on making sure that the sneakers held up a mirror to the lives of the consumers who gave Reebok life from the start.

I loved every second of it. My favorite moment would have to be the night of April 18, 2003, when one thousand or more people lined up behind a velvet rope stretching down several blocks from the entrance of the Foot Locker shoe store on 125th Street in Harlem. Police guarded the main doors, which had not yet opened, and upon becoming concerned that the crowd was growing more and more worked up by the minute, they decided to shut down the busy street to keep it clear of traffic. Inside the Foot Locker store, I was watching all this unfold as a local radio station broadcast live and reporters from local and national media outlets buzzed around waiting for Jay-Z to appear and for the unveiling of the S. Carter by RBK.

For a minute, it all seemed surreal. Who would have ever thought that a sneaker could galvanize so much attention? Then out of the recesses of memory, I heard an echo of some lines of poetry from “My Adidas” by Run-DMC and all I could do was smile.

P
op culture, like nature, abhors a vacuum. This is to say that only by responding to the events and movements happening in the times that the culture serves can there be truth and relevance—which are necessary in order for the culture to go on. Hip-hop, as both the driver of tanning and the beneficiary of it, had proven early on that it could take advantage of opportunities and be resilient in the face of challenge. And that was long before it was recognized for its profitability. Now, in the 2000s, with dramatic change happening almost on every level, each of those capacities became more evident and more needed than ever.

Those had been my thoughts in the fall of 2001 when I still had a foot in the music business but the other already in marketing. One of the trends in the record industry that wasn't hard to notice in those days was the fervor for Latino artists who were dominating pop as well as the Latin music charts. In 1999, Puerto Rican–born Ricky Martin, already well established with record releases in Spanish, debuted his English-language album and broke it out of the box with the single “Livin' la Vida Loca,” which became a global number one, followed the next year with “She Bangs”—another international smash. Between Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, and Enrique Iglesias, the influence of Hispanic artists was such a significant phenomenon that it drew attention to what was the actual changing complexion of America.

The 2000 census reported that in the largest one hundred cities in the United States, (non-Hispanic) whites—for the first time ever documented—had become the minority population. Within forty years, the Census Bureau went on to predict, more than half the population in the country would be comprised of the three most populous ethnic minority groups—Hispanics, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans. Between 1990 and 2000, the Hispanic population in the U.S. grew by 58 percent. That was thirty-five million Latinos in this country—what market research companies estimated to be over $45 billion in buying power growing at twice the rate of general consumer groups. In 2000, seven million Americans categorized themselves as “multiracial,” a literal translation of tanning, and this was so notable that within two years, a few trade groups would begin to study the market forces in a polyethnic way. Multicultural buying power in 2002 would be estimated to be worth $580 billion. And one of the most telling statistics for future trends was the fact that the fasting-growing group, the Hispanic-American population, was younger—more than a third under the age of eighteen—as opposed to the majority of the U.S. population, which was aging.

This isn't to say that Latin music in the United Sates was news to the record business. In the 1970s,
Billboard
magazine started tracking sales of Spanish-language Latin artists domestically and abroad. In 1994,
Billboard
starting charting Latin pop to account for the growing potency of English-language music by Hispanic artists. By 2001, with “Livin' la Vida Loca” charting a full-blown crossover to mainstream pop, the hinges of the doors had been knocked off. None of it was a fluke or a passing fancy. The music was hot. Young people who loved hip-hop, pop, R&B, country, you name it, embraced Latin pop en masse. They loved what and who it represented and they loved the beat for the feeling, flavor, and fun of it.

As it so happened, Ricky Martin and Shakira were signed to Sony, my former employer, now my competitor. Then they signed Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, after they had been free agents and everyone had hoped to sign them. Sony did well. The other big free agent on the market was Enrique Iglesias. Born in Spain but raised mostly in the United States, he had pursued a career very much on his own—keeping it a secret for as long as he could from his father, Julio—to avoid both riding on the coattails of his dad and being tied to him musically. After working with an independent label that produced his Spanish-language albums—earning him a meaningful international following—Enrique was ready to make his break into English-language and pop radio.

In 1999, right at this same time, we at Interscope were releasing the soundtrack for Will Smith's next movie,
Wild Wild West.
The music was mostly by hip-hop artists, but we were able to include a single on it by Enrique. Entitled “Bailamos,” the song flew up to number one on the
Billboard
Hot 100, a full-fledged pop smash. This paved the way for us to sign Iglesias to a multi-album deal at Interscope and to go right into production for his first album for Interscope
, Enrique,
which landed another number one pop hit in “Be with You.”

In 2001, the follow-up album,
Escape,
would be his most popular to date. It included the single “Hero,” a beautiful song that happened to come out right at the same time as a Marc Anthony album,
Libre
, and its single release called “Tragedy.” There was definitely a competition for which Latin artist's record of the moment would claim the greatest commercial success. Kind of dumb really, but that is the nature of an emerging art form that has to battle for legitimacy, I suppose. In any case, the contest was fierce. Marc Anthony, known as “the Voice” for being an unsurpassed male vocalist in the genre, was riding high. But then again, Enrique Iglesias, with his passion and multiple gifts as an artist, could connect to his audience with an electric current of emotion.

Then in the midst of all of us wondering whether “Hero” or “Tragedy” was going to steal the most thunder, it was September 11 and the competition was instantly forgotten. None of it mattered in the days and weeks and months that followed. Of course, “Tragedy” seemed fitting, even though it was a song about a love affair that might not have been what people needed to hear. “Hero” was also fitting and Enrique did sing it during the telethon fund-raiser that was broadcast on September 21,
America: A Tribute to Heroes
. Still, in that time when America really did try to come together as one nation, one complexion, to find our way through the darkness, charting record sales was the last thing on everyone's mind.