EVOLVE OR DIE: A STORY OF MICHEAL JORDAN AND NIKE

 

Look around you Everything changes Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving.... You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant.       STEVE MARABOLI

In 1974 David Falk was a student at George Washington University Law School. He got it in his mind that he wanted to work at Pro-Serv, a small sports agency in Washington, DC, that specialized in representing pro tennis players. For months and months he called the ProServ offices trying to get a meeting with the company's founder, Donald Dell. He never got a reply. One day he even called seventeen times during a three-hour period. Dell, either impressed or just annoyed by Falk's tenacity, finally took the call. At the end of the convo, Falk had talked his way into an unpaid internship.

Falk excelled as an intern and landed a full-time job at ProServ when he graduated law school. Falk wasn't much of a tennis fan, though. Basketball was his favorite sport. While the rest of the agents were focused on signing tennis stars, Falk started targeting college basketball players. He built a relationship with Dean Smith, the legendary coach of North Carolina, and signed several players from the program when they went to the NBA.

That relationship really paid off when Falk was able to sign a young  star from North Carolina named Michael Jordan. In the summer before Jordan's rookie season, Falk set out to get Jordan a sneaker deal.

At the time, the sneaker deals for NBA players were pretty straight forward you picked a brand (Jordan himself preferred Adidas) and negotiated a contract and maybe got a supply of sneakers to wear during the season. If you were a superstar, you might also appear on a promotional poster or a TV ad. That was it.

The sneaker companies didn't want to commit too much to NBA players, because there was an unspoken belief that it would be difficult to market an African American athlete to mainstream America.

Falk didn't have any use for the same blueprint everyone else was using. He'd noticed that when the tennis agents in his office struck a deal with a brand, it wasn't just for sneakers If a tennis player signed with Nike, in addition to sneakers, they'd also rep Nike tennis rackets, sweat suits, shirts, pants, and socks. The tennis players were promoting a complete lifestyle, and Falk didn't see why an NBA player - especially one as spectacular as Michael Jordan -couldn't do the same thing.

The agents and brands may have been stuck in their old way of thinking, but Falk sensed that the public was ready to embrace and support black athletes the way they'd supported white icons like Mickey Mantle and Joe Namath.

Falk pitched Nike on a deal that centered on Jordan being the face of his own Nike lifestyle brand, which Falk later dubbed "Air Jordan," Then he added a twist: at the time, players typically only got a flat endorsement fee, but Falk demanded that Jordan receive royalties on all Air Jordan sneakers sold. Nike agreed to Falk's terms on a five-year deal, but with a caveat: if Nike didn't sell $4 million worth of Air Jordans in the first three years, they could walk away from the contract.

They were still skeptical that a black athlete could connect with the American public.

They couldn't have been more wrong, and Falk couldn't have been more right. Forget about three years- Nike ended up selling $70 million worth of Air Jordans in the first two months after the line launched in 1985.

 

Turned out black NBA players could support a lifestyle brand after all.

Falk would go on to become one of the most successful and powerful agents in NBA history, negotiating over $800 million in salaries.

And, of course, Air Jordan would become One of the most iconic sports brands of all time. In 2020, it's expected to generate $4.5 billion in sales.

Falk's deal for Air Jordan is the type that almost every entrepreneur dreams of. So what enabled him to execute such a winning vision?

More than anything, it was his ability to evolve beyond whatever sorts of roles and expectations had been assigned to him and create a new model to support his client.

Falk didn't talk his way into ProServ and then settle into the routine of repping tennis stars. Sure, tennis was extremely popular at the time, but he could sense that the NBA was about to blow.

Once he got in the door, he started pushing the company to evolve. By pushing for change, Falk managed not only to change his own career but also to revolutionize the entire sports marketing landscape.

In every profession or field, the most successful people are always the ones who refuse to settle into the status quo, who don't get satisfied and complacent once they achieve something, but always push toward the next goal or challenge.

Conversely, people who get too comfortable or are unwilling to adapt are usually the ones who get left behind.

If you don’t evolve with trend and patterns  you will  keep fighting the inevitable , all the way to into obscurity .

 

 

Culled from Hustle Harder Hustle Smarter,  by 50 cents,  Curtis Jackson

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Haruka Nishimatsu: A Blueprint for Ethical Leadership and Corporate Responsibility

Image
  Haruka Nishimatsu, the former CEO of Japan Airlines, became a global symbol of ethical leadership, financial discipline, and corporate responsibility during one of the airline industry’s most challenging economic crises. Rather than imposing mass layoffs or prioritizing profit driven executive perks, Nishimatsu made an unprecedented decision , he took a drastic pay cut, reducing his salary to just $90,000 annually, making less than some of the airline’s pilots .   His commitment to financial prudence extended beyond just his pay check , he also eliminated executive luxuries, opting to commute via public transportation, wear modest business attire, and work in an open office environment alongside employees, instead of isolating himself in an exclusive executive suite.   His transformational leadership approach was rooted in humility, employee well-being, and long-term corporate sustainability, setting a gold standard for financial management and ethical decisio...
Read more

QUIET LEADERSHIP

It’s a reflection of Carlo’s time in football and his thoughts and philosophies on what it takes to be a leader in this profession as a football coach/leader.   Values like resect, loyalty, value of money and hard work and the importance of relationship and family. Quite Leadership There is power in being calm and measured, in building trust and making decisions coolly, in rising using influence and persuasion and being professional in your approach .   It is born out of the idea that a leader should not need to rant or rage with iron fist, but rather, their power should be implicit .   It should be crystal clear who is in charge, and their authority must result from respect and trust and value creation, rather than fear.   You earn the respect you are shown, partly through a successful career of delivering trophies (value creation) for players, clubs, but perhaps more importantly because of the fact that I respect those I also work with (building r...
Read more

STRENGTH OF PURPOSE

Image
  Have you ever seen a hen sit on an egg for 21 days? I promise you , it is one of the most powerful pictures of purpose you will ever see. No noise, no movement, no applause, just heat, pressure, and faith. From the outside, nothing looks like it's changing . But inside that shell, destiny is forming. Organs, bones, identity, purpose. And here's the thing, if you crack an egg too early, you kill what it could have become . Because potential needs time, not proof. Potential needs pressure, not popularity. What's really crazy about this process is that the hen can't see what is going on inside the egg .   No ultrasound, no feedback, no sign of life. But she sits, day after day after day. Why? Because she knows that as long as she stays faithful to the assignment, the egg will hatch. Isn't that true about purpose? You don't always see progress, but something is forming deep inside the shell. From the outside, it looks like nothing is happening. Let me say...
Read more