Real-Time Urban Consumer Insights...
The Jordan brand was especially critical because it was Nike’s crown jewel and was coveted most by urban consumers. I spent a lot of time keeping my ear to the streets to learn as much as I could about our target consumer and what motivated them. Nike conducted traditional focus groups, but I was fond of creating non-traditional focus group settings on street ball courts and urban athletic specialty retailers to get an organic feel for the consumer. My bag was always packed with Jordan product that hadn’t come out yet, which always made the kids go nuts. “Alpha” consumers were the trendsetters who were leaders among their peers and wanted the product first. Inevitably, they would influence others in their peer group. I spent most of time in New York and along the Northeast corridor where most of the trends started so I could track these consumers.
It was my version of a consumer tracking study. Many of my business decisions surrounding product, advertising, and marketing tactics were instinctive because I knew what was motivating consumers in real-time. I found out why certain sneaker styles played in the South better than the Northeast or why certain colors were hits in the Midwest and West Coast.
In New York, I would hook up with one of my favorite Nike sales reps that knew the market inside and out. One of my favorite reps to travel with was Astor Chambers who was New York. Astor would always point me in the right direction and let me know what was happening with the Jordan product and the consumer. We would go uptown to Harlem to 125th Street and spend time at retailers like Dr. Jays and Jimmy Jazz. This was prior to Old Navy, Starbucks, and others coming in. We’d normally hit the store around 3 p.m. to catch the “sneakerologists” as we called them. The sneakerologists were the kids who could tell you more about the sneaker than the product marketer. Like me, Astor was once one of those same alpha consumers so we were able to extract the desired qualitative feedback from the target and I would bring the intelligence back to Portland and the product team so we could stay as close to market as possible.
Many times I would act as a secret shopper and ask the sneakerologists what they liked about the Jordan product they were buying. It was unbelievable how pre-meditated the purchase was. Kids would walk into Dr. Jays, up the stairs, and go straight to the sales associate without even looking at the shoe wall. In fact, the only question they asked about the product was if their size was available. The numbers of young girls who purchased the Air Jordan product also amazed me. It wasn’t rare on the release day for Air Jordans to spot an entire family sporting the latest version.
Another spot I frequented was the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. Literally, store after store for a two-mile stretch could be found selling the latest footwear and apparel. A few hours on the Concourse was enough to learn which sneakers were in, which fashions and colors were hot, and which Hip-Hop artists were about to become future stars.
In Brooklyn, Fulton Street was a major artery and always ripe with fresh urban consumer insights. I could also pick up the latest underground Hip-Hop mixtape. Mixtapes are actually in CD form and are a collection of unreleased songs from Hip-Hop artists. They are sold on street corners and in bodegas, usually for $5 or $10. It was well worth it because they came with 20+ songs and tracks that you would probably never hear played on the radio or get released from the label. Mixtapes eventually became a powerful marketing tool that made unknowns like 50 Cent household names on the underground circuit before they got major record deals. They also provided the DJs such as DJ Clue who compiled the mixtapes, a platform to eventually reach the MTV generation. Mixtapes let us hear which artists were mentioning the Jordan product in their lyrics and I often cited these during sales presentations before eventually producing Jordan brand promotional mixtapes to support footwear product launches.
In Manhattan, Transit in lower Manhattan incorporated a subway motif into the concept and did a really good job merchandising the product. Transit was a destination retailer and I often conducted impromptu focus groups there with new products we were considering to get aesthetic input on colors and materials. Along the Northeast corridor, I canvassed the urban markets in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., at hot spots like Up Against The Wall. Usually the urban specialty retailers were doing the best with urban products. The national retailers like Foot Locker and Footaction also did their best sales numbers in the inner city.
On the West Coast, Los Angeles wasn’t known at the time as creating many trends but it was an important market for Nike and the Jordan brand. It was more difficult for market travel because it didn’t have the same density of stores as New York. Like everything else in LA, the locations were spread out. One of my favorite spots in Los Angeles was Inglewood, home to Inglewood Sports, a popular urban athletic specialty retailer. I took the latest shoes to Inglewood Sports, often bringing Jordan designers along to give them a feel for the consumer and additional inspiration.
One of our designers, Wilson Smith had designed most of Andre Agassi’s product and had come over to the Jordan brand. One of his first projects was to design the first women’s Air Jordan, which was no small task. I took Wilson to Inglewood Sports and he showed the various shoes to some of the female consumers. At the time the shoe was black and white. The female consumers were insistent that he create the shoe in baby blue. Designers don’t budge easily, and I wasn’t sure how Wilson would react. A year later, the customers were pleased to see the female Jordan shoe released at Inglewood Sports in baby blue. The shoe sold out instantly. LA also had a good barbershop scene. The barbershop is an institution in the inner city. In the past few years, rapper Ice Cube from the highly controversial rap group N.W.A. projected this unique experience onto the big screen with his Barbershop television and film franchise.
The barbershop is a place to learn about sex, relationships, music, politics, and current events. It’s also a place to get caught up on past issues of JET Magazine, the long-standing weekly newsmagazine from Johnson Publishing and sister publication to Ebony Magazine. Before there was US Weekly, JET was the definitive source for black politics, culture, and gossip. It’s also one of the most under-valued and under-used media outlets by advertisers and marketers because of its shelf life and intergenerational appeal. For example, issues are routinely passed from one family to another before eventually landing in the beauty salon and barbershop for patrons to peruse while enduring substantial wait times.
Talk about CPM and gross impressions. Most of these barbers are market trendsetters. Barbers are looked to for advice on hairstyles but are also visual icons for what is hot and what isn’t hot. There is tremendous foot traffic at the barbershop, so I knew it would be a great place to expose consumers to Jordan Brand products. I decided to employ a guerilla tactic and give Air Jordan product to the barbers before they were released in stores. My Nike colleague Damon Haley helped me set up a barbershop blitz. Damon was and continues to be all things grass roots marketing in LA. He is now one of the principals of the Urban Marketing Corporation of America (UMCA), which has been very successful designing and executing programs targeting urban consumers. It’s based in large part on a transcultural philosophy and understanding of the urban market that Damon shares as a member of Hip-Hop’s Generation X.
