Name: Joseph Stetson
Position: Red Bulls VP/Communications & Marketing
Age: 39
Where I’m from: Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Where I call home: Battery Park neighborhood of Manhattan
Focusing on right now: Preparing for next weekend’s home opener.
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Stetson and his wife enjoy spending family time
with their 10-month-old daughter |
Best advice: My father taught me early in my career that in business books, they stress these points of integrity, accountability and responsibility. Yet, you notice that few business people actually follow those principles. They’re too often compromised for all the wrong reasons. So, he taught me to never compromise those three pillars, and he added a fourth that he thought was even more important: respect.
A must for a new hire: Openness. Open to help, but more importantly open to be helped. I think that’s lost a lot in business. I think a lot of it comes down to ego. In sports, a lot of departments are spread very thin, so you need people that are willing to do whatever’s needed to get the job done, but also willing to work with others to make sure that it’s done right.
Exec I admire most: Red Bulls GM MARC DE GRANDPRE is the reason I returned to a sports team after taking about four years away from working for teams directly. I’ve never seen somebody successfully change the culture of an organization so positively in less than a year like he has. The business and the sporting sides are on the same page, which in all my years in sports, it’s something I’ve rarely seen.
Best book I’ve read this year: I like to reread a lot of GARY VAYNERCHUK’s books: "Crush It," "The Thank You Economy" and "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook." I liken him to the TCHAIKOVSKY of social media. The way he illustrates how brands should engage with their audiences is pretty amazing. He’s always two steps ahead of where technology, social media or digital media is going.
First thing in the morning: I have a 10-month old, so I’m on daddy duty. I’m making my daughter PENELOPE a bottle, I’m making my wife a cup of coffee. Sometimes I’m mixing the two together unfortunately. My media consumption in the morning has changed. I turn on ESPN while I’m making the bottle and the coffee. But the moment my daughter wakes up, I’m on "SESAME STREET."
Talking tech: We’re trying to improve our CRM. When I started here, we had probably 20 different licenses and had a ton of software over the last few years that we were trying to merge together. We just expanded our partnership with Microsoft Dynamics on the CRM side.
Must have music: I’m a classic soul/R&B guy, so STEVIE WONDER is my go-to. I challenge anyone to listen to anything he created and not smile. I just saw him perform “SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE,” the entire album, at Madison Square Garden.
Food for thought: My wife is a phenomenal cook. Anything she cooks is fantastic. She’s a Cuban Jew who cooks incredible Italian. Go figure that one out.
How I unwind: Playing with my daughter. When I get to spend some quality time with her, that’s when I’m most relaxed. I like to read her books, and she’s already playing with different balls, so we’re actually playing catch. She’s got some good hands already.
Day in the life: This is my first year with an MLS franchise, and I’ve been shocked with how short the offseason is. It’s like there is none. Just these last three months since our season ended, we’ve launched a marketing campaign, we’ve completely restructured our communications department, we’ve set up a more robust process for developing and distributing content and we launched a USL team. So, with all that has happened over the last couple of months, the season just starting last week, any day can be a combination of any of those items. To tell you each day is drastically different is an understatement.
