By Stacey Perman
Steve Stoute,the marketing force behind boutique advertising shop Translation, has made a living by pretty much ignoring the barriers Madison Avenue has traditionally drawn around demographics and ethnicity.
Ten years ago, Stoute left the music business- just before it tanked- and jumped into advertising and marketing. He saw an opportunity to navigate the gap that existed between corporate America and the lucrative youth market, an estimated $1.2 trillion sector that companies are eager to tap into but frequently miss the mark reaching. "Brands don't often speak to young people in a way that is representative of them," says Stoute. "What I do is contemporize a brand." But he says, "I don't take the brand away from what it stands for. I don't change what they are in order to appeal to the next generation.
As a result, Stoute has emerged as the hip-but-safe guy for large companies like Hewlett-Packard, Target, and Samsung looking to grab a piece of the youth demographic. Leveraging his background in entertainment, Stoute has accumulated an impressive lineups of deals, most recently State Farm, Wrigley and the sports and entertainment division of McDonald's. His work for McD's includes the company Super Bowl ad, which featured hoop gods Lebron James and Dwight Howard in a restyled version of the can-you-top-this-shot classic from 1993.
It was Stoute who in 2003 help steer Justin Timberlake to McDonald's for its "I'm Lovin It" campaign with a rather unorthodox approach: instead of McDonald's simply licensing an existing Timberlake song, Timberlake recorded an original "I'm Lovin' It" tune. The song got heavy airplay prior to the campaign's debut, and by the time the ad, also featuring Timberlake, aired, the public already had a relationship with the song.
Stoute sees noreason Samsung shouldn't connect with fashion rather than with sports to sell high-definition televisions. Or that a sneaker company like Reebock shouldn't make a shoe endorsed by a rap star- which it did with Jay-Z in 2003. He recognized that younger consumers were fusing music, fashion, and culture in their brand choices, and the Internet only intensified that lifestyle.
Stoute's ability to engage consumers with his client's messages was on full display when Mary J. Blige debuted her new perfume, My Life, on the Home Shopping Network July 31 to record-breaking sales. The fragrance sold 60,000 units in six hours. According to the network, it drove 20% of new customers to HSN. While the numbers were remarkable, so was the fact that buyers hadn't even had a chance to sample the fragrance. Rather, Stoute had gotten Blige to create a series of online videos vignettes so customers could connect with her. He calls the perfume "Mary's Life encapsulated in a product." The marketing came down to the power of storytelling, says Stoute." I put Mary on air and let her speak her story, her life, her journey, and showed footage of her being a part of the process of making the fragrance. It was a grand slam".
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Saturday, August 21st 2010 at 3:11PM
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