The Tanning of America Read online

  In the ensuing years, accounts of the events that followed took on mythical proportions. Though the details I’d hear as my career evolved would vary—what was said and by whom, when it was proposed, how much was offered—the central fact of the matter is that when the Adidas executives witnessed twenty thousand young urban fans jubilantly holding their brand aloft, they immediately saw the incredible economic potential that this new, raw form of entertainment possessed. Besides the vision of Russell Simmons and company in anticipating this reaction, I have to acknowledge how far ahead of his time Angelo Anastasio was. An Italian in his thirties, Anastasio would have been foolish to think Run-DMC in any way resembled the all-American mainstream images that global companies yearned to associate with their brands. But by all accounts, the cultural revelation that night at the Garden was as akin to a religious conversion as anything the Adidas brass had ever experienced.

  According to Run (a.k.a. Reverend Run in later decades), the instant he walked offstage, one of the executives took him in hand and announced he was going to be given his own Adidas line. In a move that was completely unprecedented in the annals of marketing history, Adidas went on to negotiate an endorsement deal with Run-DMC to promote the company’s sneakers, the threesome’s own signature products, and an array of accessories. At upward of 1.5 million dollars, the deal made the rappers the first-ever nonathletes to become the international standard-bearers for what had theretofore been strictly marketed as an athletic shoe. The deal also transformed the fortunes of Adidas Group AG, bringing them back from the brink of marketplace irrelevance and infusing their brand with the unbridled energy and electromagnetic cool of urban youth, all of which translated into a quantum boost in revenue too.

  This translation—a convergence between two entities from totally dissimilar, distinct cultural galaxies—was a foreshadowing of greater magic still to come. Not only did it school hip-hop artists and their promoters as to the opportunities to be seized in the cosmos of corporate marketing, but it was also an even bigger eye-opener for the corporate marketers. That said, I don’t think anyone knew what the alignment of the two forces that had officially commenced that July of 1986 was going to do to accelerate the tanning effect and alter the landscape of America—racially, socially, politically, and especially economically. It’s even more doubtful that anyone envisioned the extent to which hip-hop would take root—as a culture and a mind-set—for the younger generations it drew into its fold, becoming a way of life and, moreover, for all intents and purposes a religion.

  As for me, it wasn’t until November 2008—more than two decades after Run-DMC blasted off into pop culture history in their sneakers—that I grasped the personal significance of the momentous concert at Madison Square Garden. The relevance to my life and career finally dawned on me in the midst of a very memorable occasion—on November 18, 2008, to be precise—during a gala luncheon at Cipriani in midtown Manhattan where I was being inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Achievement. As I sat at a table surrounded by some of my most important influences—including my parents—it occurred to me that if not for the wheels set into motion by “My Adidas,” I might not have been sitting there at all.

  At thirty-eight years old, as a relative newcomer to the advertising business, I was more surprised by the honor than just about anyone—that is, maybe, except for my father. After watching me switch in and out of five different colleges (without graduating) and try my hand at a series of occupations, he had every reason to think that I was never going to settle into a career.

  Nothing had really changed his mind during the 1990s. Those were the years of my twenties, when I was working my way up in the music business. After starting out as a roadie-turned-road-manager for the rap duo Kid ’n Play, I launched my own company as an artists’ manager and producer, overseeing the careers of artists like Nas and Mary J. Blige, before going on to head up a record division at Sony Records and ultimately being made president of urban music at Interscope/Geffen/A&M Records. The universe of hip-hop was expanding exponentially in those days and for me it was like being at the forefront of the action when the wild, wild west was won—while being in the mix with everyone from Jay-Z to Sean “Puffy” Combs, from Mariah Carey and Will Smith to Dr. Dre and Eminem, to name a few.

  For the Queens teenager in me who grew up taping rap music on pirate radio at two in the morning, to have risen to the heights of the music industry as an executive, not even thirty years old, with a Grammy and an American Music Award as icing on the cake, I was living a dream come true. Not that it was all glory. From without and within, obstacles abounded.

  Even in these big boom years for hip-hop, most of the major record labels had no idea how to market the music, much less understand the culture. Many powerbrokers—like the head of the record label at Sony, Don Ienner, who was known to have dropped both Alicia Keys and 50 Cent from their first label—seemed to uphold the status quo that continued to view black music, in general, as appealing mainly to African-American audiences ; rap continued to be seen by the industry as viable only with a subgroup of that niche demographic. As a result, for much of the nineties, getting radio play and music videos on TV had been a daily battle royale.

  But against the odds and sometimes in spite of itself, rap and hip-hop culture couldn’t and wouldn’t be stopped. Incredibly, by the end of 1999 it was determined that rap music had outsold country music for the year. Crazy! The craziest part wasn’t just the sales figures but where they were being generated: in those illogical zip codes in places like Orem, Utah, and Kennebunkport, Maine; in rural outposts and on Ivy League campuses; in suburbs and inner cities alike.

  How was this possible? In short: It was the phenomenon that’s at the center of this book, The Tanning of America. The cultural explosion occurring mainly under the radar made me wonder if there was some kind of millennial mind meld happening. Were younger generations disproving the conventional wisdom that was running corporate America and Madison Avenue? To unravel those questions and others, I decided to leave the music business at the top of my game and go in search of answers in a radically different direction—in the advertising world. As an outsider, this meant I would have to start at the bottom of the ladder in an industry that was driven by baby boomers, many stuck in mind-sets from yesteryear, none eager to give up the keys to the car. But there was also a new developing arena within the ad business, what has been called branded or entertainment marketing, that provided an opportunity for me to have a hand in its evolution. That’s when the story of “My Adidas” and Run-DMC began to resonate.

  Clearly, cultural tremors of the magnitude that were being generated in hip-hop’s early glory days had caused changes in commerce—currents that had spread over time and were starting to cause seismic shifts in consciousness. So the convergence back in July 1986 wasn’t a fluke or chance meeting. It was a mirror for what was happening on a broader scale in urban America and beyond, revealing how rap was a litmus test for where youth culture was going, and how a savvy marketer from Europe picked up on the cues—doing so in ways that much of Madison Avenue and corporate America hadn’t yet figured out. (And many still haven’t.)

  That was the kind of mirror I wanted to hold up. Which, I should add, still didn’t convince my father that I had a real job. Try telling your parents that you make your living by translating cultural cues to Fortune 500 companies and helping them communicate more effectively with consumers. After partnering with advertising veteran Peter Arnell for a couple of years before our company was sold, I went on to launch my own agency—with the collaboration of some of the most brilliant individuals I’ve ever met. Our team comes from not only a mix of business worlds (including marketing, music, and media) but also a multi-generational, multiethnic mix of backgrounds: a literal representation of global tanning.

  From the start, I recognized that the countercultural nature of hip-hop didn’t lend itself to being packaged or regimented in the way that advertising campaigns ru
n by corporate America move. But I also knew that there was a natural meeting place for the two. Uncommon bedfellows? No question. But they also each have something the other needs. My role was to be the conduit—the bridge. And so that was the thinking behind the name, Translation, that I chose for my company and to describe what we do.

  As a kind of pop culture anthropologist, what I also do is help clients find relevant ways to reinvigorate their brand—whether, as a few examples, it’s McDonald’s, Target, Estée Lauder, Hewlett-Packard, Wrigley, Tommy Hilfiger, Verizon, State Farm, Samsung, a shoe company or two, or a host of public and philanthropic organizations. In a time of economic upheaval the likes of which we’ve been living through in recent years, marketers’ connecting meaningfully to the new young consumer—the single most powerful purchasing force ever measured, who is currently driving the global marketplace—is a life-and-death brand survival act. This too has to do with translating. No, not in sending messages to be crammed down the throats of consumers, but in extending an invitation, communicating it with nuance and cool.

  Others have pointed out, and I agree, that marketing must evolve beyond the monologue, to dialogue and to megalogue. No longer can advertising lecture or dictate to customers; interaction and exchange are vital. Add to that the social networking media and technology that the millennials have understood since nursery school, and it means that marketing to the group conversation—the megalogue—must be seamlessly incorporated.

  Translated, this has required a thorough housecleaning of the old demographic boxes—for example, the “black 18 to 24” box that you mark differently from the “white 18 to 24”—along with questioning worn-out assumptions about who wants what and why and, more importantly nowadays, who needs what and why. It requires an authentic, vibrant, hip, and, at times, reinvented means of storytelling—and a rejection of yesterday’s rules. Why not, for instance, start with a hip-hop/pop superstar, produce a hit single by said artist, and invite millions of consumers to pay for it, to sing the words, and to dance to its beat in clubs and dance halls? With the stage thus set, why not then reveal in a similarly contagious upbeat commercial that it’s a jingle—and blow everyone’s mind? Translation has done it on more than a few occasions for blue-chip institutional brands, only as one element in multitiered campaign strategies. We employed the work of fashion’s modern godfather, Valentino, to showcase Samsung products—marrying the timeless art of fashion with the immediate cool of cutting-edge technology, all in the middle of a New York City street. We conceived and launched new brands for the likes of Reebok, attaching them to signature lines based on the tastes of global hip-hop icons, transforming images stuck back in the day into ones being given a street pass.

  Reflecting the changes in attitudes influenced by tanning, we celebrate the clash of cultures and generations in mash-ups that bring together often the least likely pairings from the worlds of sports and pop culture. A musical remix for General Motors with artists that run the gamut from hip-hop to rock to country. A McDonald’s Super Bowl spot putting together multigenerational basketball icons like Larry Bird and LeBron James. A campaign making Gwen Stefani/Hewlett-Packard relevant to mothers with cameras. Making a connection in values to black audiences and communities of color for Disney’s film The Princess and the Frog by aligning it with the most genuinely natural beauty line on the market to lend credibility to their first African-American princess franchise!

  What I do for a living also involves assisting clients, the public at large, and my own team to find comfort in the discomfort of going where we have feared to tread before. This has involved representing the core values of artists while grooming them as entrepreneurs and philanthropists, and on the flip side bringing the worldwide creative directors of brands such as Gucci and Crest toothpaste physically into the inner city. It has involved having a voice in diverse media and educational forums to promote the need for seeking the same fluency in the boardroom as on the street. Comfort in discomfort.

  At Cipriani on November 18, 2008, it was with great pride that I accepted the induction honor and, standing at the podium, was able to confirm to Dad, “Yes, I really do have a job.” No one present that day was any prouder than him, except maybe my mom.

  Up until that moment, I had continued to feel like an outsider in the advertising world. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing either, if the goal is bringing fresh insights to the table. But that day there was no denying a new sense of belonging. And I realized then that it wasn’t just about me or about the convergence of the worlds of hip-hop and mainstream marketing that had lit a spark with “My Adidas” and had been a magic charm for my career. It was about the positive, powerful potential of urban youth culture, which, when harnessed properly, managed to bring disparate groups of people together in ways that the combined energies of previous generations could not.

  Lest there be any question about that proposition, I only had to think of how the planet had shifted on its axis a mere two weeks earlier with the 2008 presidential election. To my parents, their generation, and the generations before them who had marched for freedom and equality, this was crossing the river Jordan into the Promised Land—the end of the struggle. To us, generations raised post–baby boom and post–civil rights, it was the first true flexing of our political muscle—a beginning. The playing field had been leveled for everyone—black, white, brown, yellow, red, blue, green, rich, poor, educated or not, those with access and those without. For many who had never believed it possible, this was the first time they could honestly say, “Hey, you know what, maybe I can be president.”

  Here’s how Jay-Z put it, calling out to the legions, asking first, “Roc nation, what up?” and then going on to answer:My president is black

  In fact he’s half-white

  So even in a racist mind

  He’s half right

  If u have a racist mind, u be aight

  My president is black

  But his house is all white

  Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk

  Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run

  Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly.

  So there I was, twelve days after the election, at Cipriani, where I was celebrating a personal career highlight and a historical pinnacle for our country, when the dots connected for me that became the outline for this book. The premise was suddenly simple. If you stuck a pin in a place in time, not long after the dawn of the 1970s in the Bronx—where hip-hop would have its official birthplace in a rec room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue—you could draw a direct line from that location to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where President Barack Obama took up residence almost forty years later. It’s a journey that would have never been completed without the adhesive of youth culture and its embrace of a mind-set inclusive of racial diversity—a phenomenon wrought by the tanning of America.

  One of the complications in understanding how such a cultural revolution is propelled is that as it gathers individuals from different backgrounds into a more like-minded stratum, at the same time there is an equal and opposite reaction causing push-back and opposition to change. For that reason, I recognize that not everyone believes that what I have identified as tanning is actually happening or that there is this new mental melting pot that impacts all of us. And that is one of the main purposes I have in writing this book.

  For anyone at any level of commerce, from corporate execs to aspiring entrepreneurs, from marketing directors to college students who will soon be entering the working world, this is therefore a cautionary tale: Ignore the globalization of popular culture at your own peril. Just as I believe passionately in pointing out there is such a thing as tanning that matters for marketing, I also think it is to the benefit of every sector of society to learn how we can better communicate with one another—which involves understanding code and learning to speak the language of tanning, which is not static and written in stone but is continually, rapidly evolving. From the point of view of sheer economics
, this fluency is not only necessary for knowing and connecting to today’s younger consumer (without losing existing, core consumers), it’s all the more important for the generations who could be pulling the levers on the forces shaping the global marketplace.

  My hope is that the audience for this book is as inclusive as the generation most influenced by the tanning process. You don’t have to be a teen or tween or in your early twenties to take part in a culture that has gotten rid of segments ruled by color. Tan really has no age. And cool really is a state of mind. At the same time, The Tanning of America is more than a chronicle of how we arrived at where we are. I also want it to be a coming-out party for those of you in the generation stepping into adulthood in the new millennium who’ve grown up without the cultural stereotypes of the past. Putting myself in your shoes, I imagine that it would be empowering to have someone open the world’s eyes to my generation’s way of thinking, my generation’s capacities that contrast with those of other generations—those dinosaurs who see society in columns and who hold on to beliefs bound by compartmentalized ways and behaviors.

  Because I come out of the hip-hop generation and have the unique dual perspective of having worked in the music industry and in advertising, I have had a chance to both observe the cultural revolution of tanning and experience it. What I don’t want to see happen is that we ignore its hybrid-power properties or that it goes by the wayside as disposable history or that credit isn’t given to our generation and the next ones. We’re the ones who will need to grapple with how to keep the American dream alive and well in our time—the dream that is still intrinsic to popular culture, our number one most profitable national export.

  My ultimate goal in writing The Tanning of America is to put an end, once and for all, to the boxing of individuals based on color. From a marketing standpoint, yes, I understand why the interests of an age group like 25 to 34 might be different from those of the 62 to 75 group. But color is no longer a determining factor in how people think. Run DMC and “My Adidas” proved that. The fact that the music, the language, the style, and even the belief system of hip-hop culture have gone global, spurring the next wave of tanning around the world, also proves it.