When you’ve been in business for a number of years, boredom or complacency can set in. Not for Jameel Spencer. After working with so many popular brands and A-list celebrities, Spencer still not only comes up with winning ideas but is still driven to see them through to completion. Recently named chief marketing officer of Sequential and working with the likes of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter, he has no other choice but to elevate his game.
Spencer took time to discuss with BlackEnterprise.com what gets him up in the morning, how he got into marketing, and what he hopes to be doing in 20 years.
BlackEnterprise.com: You started in sales. What led you on your path to marketing?
Jameel Spencer: I have always been a marketer for as long as I can remember. Even back in college as the president of my fraternity, I would come up with all the concepts for our shows and events. I never considered myself a salesman until I looked up the Webster’s definition which states that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm. That showed me that I could only sell something in which I truly believed.
The transition to marketing was a seamless one. I found myself selling media and then assisting in the promotion of that media in a 360-degree way in the form of marketing. The first real intersection of those two disciplines came to life in my tenure at Vibe Magazine. At Vibe I sold music and entertainment advertising, but I spent the majority of my time partnering with the labels and the studios using the Vibe trademark and consumer base to assist in the promotion of the artists or films we advertised. I think it was my ability to be an integral part of the overall storytelling of the artists, films, and brands I was selling that was and continues to be instrumental in my evolution and success as an executive.
Based on your experience and success in this field, what attributes would you say are most important to be successful in this game?
I think marketing all comes down to execution. Everybody has ideas, but not as many people have the skill set, relationships, and resourcefulness to execute. I also think your ability to execute becomes significantly easier if you have a track record for getting things done. Track record gives you the experience to understand the necessary pitfalls, the temperament to remain undaunted when things don’t go as planned (as they typically do not), and the necessary access to problem solve in the process.
You’ve worked with some popular brands and figures such as Shaquille O’Neal, VIBE, Sean Combs, Roc-A-Fella, Ecko, and Jay-Z to name a few. How do you handle the day-to-day dealings with people who are at the top of their field and brands that are household names? Is there an added pressure?
I don’t consider there to be any pressure working with celebrities. Working with celebrities is only difficult if you look at them as anything more than brands trying to maximize their value proposition. One of my biggest assets as a marketer of celebrities is that I do not allow myself to become so enamored with them that I cannot be honest enough to do my job. If you can’t tell someone that what they want to do is a bad idea, then you are not going to last. Honesty and truth are the major pillars of how I have worked with these people over the years. They tend to have enough people who will tell them what they want to hear. The most important thing is to clearly understand who that person or brand is, and be relentless in staying true to their DNA. Even when evolving or repositioning [a brand], it must be done in a way that is believable. Once consumers start questioning a person or brand’s truth, it’s the beginning of the end, and that’s consistent no matter how many points you’ve scored or how many records you’ve sold.
How has the hip-hop culture been able to help you, as a fan of hip-hop, in your line of work, based on the brands you help market?
Hip-hop afforded me and a lot of my peers an opportunity to become executives and sit across the table from other powerful people from different and may I dare say, more conventional backgrounds. It’s interesting to me, because if you think about it, pop culture has consistently throughout time been driven by urban culture. Over the last 25 years, hip-hop has been the driving force of urban culture, and as a result, driven popular culture. I always find it interesting when someone wants to dismiss my experience as “hip-hop,†or even “lucky” based on being connected to a Sean Combs or Shawn Carter. I think people often dismiss Puff and Jay’s success as something less than skill, too. The reality is that we are all sitting at the same table but we come from different backgrounds, and it’s unfair or [indicative of] a lack of vision that allows us to dismiss one journey over another. I didn’t go to Harvard Business School, but I have had a lot of Ivy League MBA’s work for me. What I have learned over the last 20 years, being an integral part of the ascent of hip-hop culture, has been as valuable as any business school I could have ever attended.
You’ve recently been named chief marketing officer of Sequential, and you are operating your own agency under the  Brand Matter name. Congrats on the new position! What are your goals and directives in this new role?
In my new role I am excited about the opportunity for us to purchase intellectual property and put them in the position to realize their full potential. In the past marketers came up with tactics to put brands on top of minds of a given consumer. In the licensing model that we are activating here at Sequential, we are a more integral part of the process. We define a brand’s “reason to be,†identify license partners who are best suited to assist in realizing that reason, and then secure
distribution at a retailer that closes the circle. Marketing is only half of the work. I think what we are doing at Sequential is on the pulse of how marketers will add value going forward. It won’t be enough to just come up with the next cool campaign. With Brand Matter, it’s the same concept of leveraging my relationships and experiences with brands to assist celebrities in realizing their dreams of monetizing their intellectual property. If Jay-Z wants to sell sunglasses or David Beckham wants to sell underwear, Brand Matter can find them the right partners to ensure that they are successful and manage the process so that these associations add to their personal brands.What gets you up daily to go to work and put your all into what you do? What drives you?
What drives me is an interesting question. I still get excited by coming up with ideas and seeing them come to fruition. That’s what made me fall in love with marketing in the first place. I still want to challenge myself every day to evolve and be better today than I was the day before. The only difference is now I do it all to be an example to my children and all the other young people. To show them that anything is possible if you work hard. That if you continue to challenge yourself to be great instead of good, that nothing is impossible. I see a million people who aspire to be the next Shaq or Jay-Z, but I want to be proof that if you just maximize yourself, and be the best you, that’s better than being Shaq or Jay any day.
What advice would you offer regarding maintaining longevity in your field?
Manage your career as if it were a brand. Everything you do can be judged or seen as an indictment or endorsement. Make decisions consistently with that in mind. I’ve worked for four incredible CEO’s in my life and have learned something different from each of them. From Puff I learned the value of hard work. He’s
the most successful guy in the company, but he’s also the hardest working. From Jay I learned the value of truth, unwavering truth. Jay never does anything outside of his truth. Every decision, every endorsement, every song is propelling his truth. From Neil Cole I learned go big or go home. It’s just as much work and energy to be safe, so swing for the fences. And now with Yehuda at Sequential, I am a part of creating an environment where people want to see us succeed. You cannot meet anyone who does not want to see him succeed. Why? Because he has managed his career and his life in a way that actually embodies all the attributes previous stated. Hard work, truth, swing for the fences, and do it all with a level of integrity. If you subscribe to these tenets, you should do OK.Which is more important: passion or expertise?
Passion and expertise go hand in hand. You can be much more passionate about things that you have complete understanding of. There’s nothing worse than someone passionate about something that they don’t fully understand. Passion can get you but so far, although it’s a necessary part of the process. One without the other is not ideal.
What is Jameel Spencer doing in 20 years?
In 20 years, Jameel Spencer has completed a successful and rewarding career in marketing (and made a load of money.) I have six children, the youngest of whom is now 4, so in 20 years I am an empty nester with my wife. I went back and got my law degree to start a high-powered law firm only to sell it and become the athletic director at the University of Texas in Austin, where my wife was born. And I am still the richest man in the world because I have the best family and friends a man can ask for.