ORIGIN STORY
Among the many twists of my career I was lucky enough to own a very small agency that had a very large account. Reebok. At the start of the Iverson era.
Iverson was a phenomenon. An undersized player from the depths of poverty who climbed to MVP his first season and became not only a competitive force but the incarnation of Hoop Dreams. He was from the streets and ♥️by them more than any player, ever. Knowing this, he couldn’t be marketed in the traditional manner.
We were very careful to keep everything he did authentic but also uplifting. We decided every asset we made would contain a useful tool 🔧to his fan base. His crossover was the great equalizer. A bigger player had no chance against him, as he famously proved by breaking Jordan’s ankles in the playoffs.
We packaged his crossover in tv spots that put him under the microscope and developed the 3D frozen moment (before The Matrix). We placed pullout dance floors in magazines that diagramed each step of his move. With his unprecedented access and trust we made genuine documentaries of his lifestyle. We immortalized him with the best known Graffiti artists and had Jadakiss of the Lox bless him with bars. We made our own magazines and inserted him into the top hip hop publications with Vibe’s Greg Tate as our journalist.
It was raw and benevolent work, before being benevolent was cool. For over twenty years I got emails from people who figured out I’d done the “Recognize - crossover” spot and they’d thank me, having recorded the spot to their VCR and used the step by step to become a better baller. That was the type of reward we were after.
