Jeron Smith: Content, marketing never stop

Jeron Smith’s hopes for an NBA career didn’t work out, but he has found a career path through change and taking chances.Tony Florez

I always did think I was going to be in the business of sport. I interned at Nike during my junior year of college, and I could not believe they pay people to do stuff like that. I was like, “I would do this for free. I might actually pay Nike to be a part of some of this stuff.”

Funny story, I’m not super proud of this story … but after my [Nike] internship they had an individual, he was like, “Hey, internship went great, we would love to help you kind of get a job here.” I was like, “That sounds cool. I appreciate the kind words, but I think I got a shot at going to the NBA so let’s table that conversation.” … And he looked at me like I was crazy, and I always say I spent the next 3 1/2 years trying to get back into Nike.

Basketball never stops. … It was really a function of being young at the company and kind of having that young energy but not necessarily understanding the process parameters. … It was the NBA lockout, and the advertising team had produced a brief around what our brand message was going to be around that time. And I’m reading the brief and it’s kind of giving the background and it’s like, “Hey, you know, the game continues, the game doesn’t stop, basketball never stops.” I’m like, “Oh that’s it. It’s basketball never stops.”

I learned that the consumer decides. The consumer is the ultimate trump card. Everything starts with the consumer. … So that was like the most foundational pillar at Nike was everything started with consumer insights.

I was about 30. And for someone at that juncture in my career where I think most people in the room could identify, you work your whole career to get to this plateau. … So I felt like I worked my whole career to get to that point and to then make a U-turn, take a deviation and cut that two and a half times, to go into a short-term gig [at the White House Office of Digital Strategy], one that you know you’re going to lose your job at the end of the [Obama] administration. … At Nike I felt like I had been there long enough where anything I really needed to get done I could get done, and I was giving up that familiarity. So that was tough.

I’m passionate about digital strategy, kind of brand marketing, and that expertise, that function. To me, this was the ultimate challenge in applying that skill set in an environment that I had never been a part of previously.

I never got a chance to play [basketball with President Barrack Obama]. I used to play with Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, often on the White House court.

Stephen [Curry] used to say he hated the word brand. Right. And I understood it. I understood why he’d say that. And ultimately you hear the word, probably one of the most overused words in marketing is authenticity, but it’s probably overused because it’s so pertinent to any type of kind of brand marketing exercise. … And authenticity was the key. When you think about who he is and what he stands for, it was always being kind of authentic to his foundation and his pillars. And that’s kind of carried over into what we’re doing with Unanimous.

Family is not only important to [Curry], but kind of everybody that works in the ecosystem, and when you start to look at the types of things Unanimous is doing in the media space, you’ll see family and kind of people bringing people together as a through line.

When I think about athletes in the media space, kind of the first thing is that every athlete is a media company in their own right. An athlete is on social media by definition, they’re a media company. They are creating and producing content for a large audience and sometimes that content is monetized.

The biggest thing I’ve learned working in Hollywood is that there’s an incredibly wide gap between getting a yes and getting something on air. So the development process is long, it’s vast, and it takes awhile to create a great product.

Read. I would say consume, consume, consume. … Consuming as much information as possible, understanding the key players, current trends, what’s happening in the industry and kind of understanding everything.

I always say be hungry, not thirsty. I think when I was young trying to get into the industry, I definitely fell into the thirsty bucket. Probably a little too persistent, too many phone calls, not enough strategy. … More strategy is definitely pertinent and there’s nothing wrong with being hungry and really wanting it, but being thirsty is maybe not the best strategy. … The first question I always ask is, “What can I do for you? How can I help?”