Like the conductor of an orchestra, Erin Patton has been in charge of arranging the proper beat, dynamic, and tempo for numerous brands, most notably as Nike’s lead architect in the creation of the Jordan Brand, in 1997, and directing the launch of Stephon Marbury’s Starbury brand, in 2006. Patton currently serves as Adjunct Professor of Sports Marketing in the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University, is the Principal of his own brand management firm, and has written a just-released book, Under the Influence: Tracing the Hip-Hop Generation’s Impact on Brands, Sports, & Pop Culture, detailing by first-hand experience the workings of the athletic footwear industry and the inner workings of a marketing mastermind.

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Project Bluefoot: Most people in the footwear world know you as the original brand architect for Jordan Brand. Can you tell us how you got into that position?

Erin Patton: I would love to say it was my own unique design but it was really a matter of being in the right place at the right time. And being prepared and qualified to begin to engineer a process that had evolved more than 10 years prior with the Air Jordan and what it represented within basketball and popular culture. And for me, having been one of those Alpha-early adopters that as a teen, growing up in Pittsburgh in the inner city in the 80s, the mid-80s in particular, when I was in high school when the first Jordans were released, you know, it was revolutionary. And of course, as consumers at that point looking to identify with certain brands and certain products that would validate our status and give us an opportunity to turn ourselves into a canvas and express ourselves through fashion.

The Air Jordan, you know, was the badge at that particular time. And so I came of age with the Air Jordan phenomenon, being influenced by it, and so as I continued in my journey coming from that place and coming from an urban environment where the Jordan product was held in an even higher regard, then, perhaps, in other places, when I came into Nike I brought with me an understanding of the product and how it was positioned and even its unique attributes relative to it being a fashion-first, performance-second, you know, things that didn’t necessarily register with Nike.

Clearly, Nike understood that Jordan gave a lot of creative license to do things from a styling standpoint and with the aesthetics of the shoe to push the envelope a little bit. But I think I was able to help accelerate the pace at which we were able to take the insights and understanding from the consumer and their style and their preferences and their attributes and build that into product and also in the way we articulated the brand positioning.

So the fact that I came into Nike at a time where the company was looking to carve out a separate business for Michael, I brought with me the unique understanding of not just the urban market, but overall, had some ideas and some creativity and just kind of chompin at the bit to get my hands on that kind of brand and product and ran with it.

The launch of Brand Jordan, inside Niketown New York, 1997. (From left: Ahmad Rashad, Erin Patton, Tinker Hatfield, Michael Jordan)

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PBF: At that particular time, around ‘96-‘97, was Michael Jordan talking more about trying to separate or segment off into his own brand or his own division? Or where within the company was it decided that all of a sudden this was the point where you wanted to branch out into a larger Jordan Brand?

EP: I believe it was mutual as Michael was looking beyond his playing days and starting to think about longevity for the brand. I think he was certainly wanting to sort of spread his wings a little bit and create more opportunity for other athletes. You have to remember the Jordan product and the Air Jordan, you know, every – certainly all the elite amateur players to college level and in many cases even in the NBA, you know they were all rocking the Jordan or they’d come up to him and say “Hey, tell your Nike folks to send me those!”

You know, when you’re watching the NBA, on NBC or wherever and you see cats talking to Michael, they weren’t just talking about the game – they were talking about getting on the list to get the new J’s when they came out. So he had a strong desire to also bring some other people into the franchise, and certainly for Nike’s strategic purposes, the folks within the Basketball category and some very smart, bright people like Peter Ruppe, David Bond who was the Category Business Director of Nike Basketball, certainly Mark Parker, who obviously rose to now be President over there, Tinker Hatfield as well on the creative side and design obviously, and [Howard] “H” White and, you know, the real strong brain trust within footwear realized it reached a point where it made sense to figure out a way to differentiate Jordan and separate it from Nike even though they were sort of inextricably linked in many cases between Jordan and Nike but there was also a positive inherent separation between the two and I think that became clearly understood and as we were looking at the overall Basketball category and Nike Basketball obviously enjoyed a significant market share – at that particular point you had Penny and Barkley and everyone inbetween in the Nike Basketball category, so the thought was “How do we grow the pie?”

So the “Jordan Brand” created a great value proposition for consumers who certainly wanted to have the very best in terms of technology and everything else, but also the aesthetic that came with the Jordan brand and seeing how we could effectively take that and roll it out and create some architecture around it within different categories, and so we focused on Team and brought in some of the colleges like Cincinnati, St. John’s, North Carolina A&T, and on the professional level, carved it out with the Jumpman Pro, and then eventually a couple products for guys like Eddie Jones and Vin Baker, being two of the guys that first came into the fold. So that was really from a strategic standpoint, especially with Michael preparing to transition from the sport and knowing what the opportunity was, we wanted to make sure that we created a strong brand architecture that would be sustainable over the long haul.

PBF: On the Jumpman Pro, the Eddie Jones shoe, the Vin Baker shoe, who designed those?

EP: The Jumpman Pro was designed by Tinker Hatfield and his crew. There was the Jumpman Pro Quick and the Jumpman Pro Strong. So, the Quick was Eddie Jones and the Strong was for Vin Baker and those came out of the [Innovation] Kitchen with Tinker being involved, as well as the Jordan Team. Tinker had a group of designers over there that was working with him to bring some of those products to market.

The first women’s Jordan shoe that we did was actually designed by Wilson Smith who was over in Nike Tennis, and so Wilson came over and did that particular shoe. And Chamique Holdsclaw was about to come out and we were really starting to figure out how to carve out some women’s business so Wilson came in and designed that. And that was similar on the design side – a lot of the designers were interested in being able to get involved in designing on the Jordan product.

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PBF: In your new book, you mentioned you were carving out this original business plan for Jordan Brand and you’d lobby heavily within the company to get resources and support. What was the initial pushback within Nike from the people showing resistance to the idea?

EP: It was certainly, you know, based on business instincts where some felt that we could potentially cannibalize within the Basketball category for one thing. So some of it was real thoughtful and deliberate debate that went on. Clearly, everyone understood the opportunity and certainly recognized that there did exist a desire for consumers to gravitate to products other than the Air Jordan.

There were some who questioned if after [Michael] walked away, when he wasn’t on Sportcenter every night or hitting game-winning shots and all those kinds of things, would the product be as relevant when he was no longer playing. There were certainly a few in the room that shared that. But by and large, everyone felt that it made sense to do it, it was just how to do it.

And what did it mean for Nike…you have to realize that across the organization that’s a pretty strong ripple effect if you think about what that means for the sales guys who traditionally carried a Jordan in their sales bag as sort of their trump card, as they’re out there interfacing with their customers. For the advertising agency – what does that mean for a different approach for advertising. And merchandising. I mean, no matter where you turned, it was something that was a paradigm shift, and whenever you shift a paradigm, there’s going to be some who are on the front of that paradigm shift and there are some who will be behind it.

But really we were just focused on trying to get folks to zoom out. Because sometimes, and not just at Nike, but at any corporation, you can get so close to what you’re doing that you can’t take the time to kind of zoom out and look at the full landscape and make quality strategic decisions because you’re so focused on what’s right in front of you. And a lot of times that’s where companies trip because they don’t see the bigger picture. It’s purely a function of comfort level in some cases, and whenever you’re trying to bring forth new ideas, new innovations, it’s something that does require lobbying, shaking hands, kissing babies.

We had a strong group of leaders within the organization who committed to it and certainly Michael was very vocal in terms of what he wanted to see happen and what he believed could happen. And of course he understood that and I understood that, especially looking at different points and being able to attack in certain areas like the “Kill Zone” in pricing, below $100, and certain things that we’d be able to do. But again, strategically that makes sense for Jordan, but if you talk about bringing a Jordan product into a Kill Zone price point, what does that do to the other product?

So, some of the anxiety was based on numbers, based on facts, and some of the unknown. We were able to articulate this brand position through the business plan and through our various meetings, both here in the U.S. and also internationally. I remember being in Europe and other places where we were going to communicate to them we were creating a separate brand for Michael and, you know, even globally that represented a totally – talk about paradigm shift – that was a new world for them literally because the Jordan product was it for them. And so anything outside of what their business was built and based on, took a little bit of politicking.

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PBF: We did an interview recently with Peter Moore, Nike’s original Creative Director and designer of Air Jordan I, and he mentioned right from the start back then that there were people within the company that didn’t think Michael could support a brand on his own. Or say with badging issues, you’d have the Nike Swoosh on a Jordan shoe and if you took it off what would happen? The discussions that took place internally in the company is kind of fascinating.

EP: Yeah, it was a very dynamic time.

I’d go from one meeting where everyone was a consensus, “we’re behind you,” “let’s go,” “let us know what we need to do and we’ll execute,” then you go in another meeting and it was a lot different. So I’ve got some battle scars that I wear proudly from those days and at the end of the day, Nike is a very competitive place and there’s a great deal of passion. And you’re talking about the best and brightest the industry has to offer.

So one has to expect that sort of push and pull but when you have a vision and you’re committed to making something happen and that’s going to enhance the growth of the company, the position of the company, the earnings, the market share, and at the end of the day believe serving the consumer in the proper way. You just keep pushing.

Michael always said, “success occurs when preparation meets the opportunity,” and we were prepared.

We had lots of equity behind us and we had a good, solid gameplan in terms of how to grow the brand and go and evolve into other sports and categories like training. At that time, just to give you a sense of, you know, paradigm shift, as I use that term, you’d go to a meeting and they’d say, “what are we going to do in terms of other athletes,” or “what does that look like,” or “are they even going to want to wear Michael Jordan’s shoe – will they feel somehow less-than?”

You know, the guys that fit this brand DNA will see that as an honor, and that was really the strategy. That he was literally bestowing upon certain guys, he was knighting them, so to speak. We would say in that context, well certainly just basketball, so you can think of a lot of athletes who aspire to the same level of professionalism or if it was just how they prepared, the tenacity, all the things that Michael had, there were clearly some basketball players in the NBA and on the college level that we felt, “ok, that lines up well,” but we would go into the meeting and say “we don’t have to stop there.”

There are athletes in baseball, athletes in football, who are Jordan-esque, so then it’s like “whoa – you mean you’re going to put a Jumpman logo on a baseball players hoody…are you kidding?” So in other words, that kind of paradigm shift. But in our mind, it’s like why wouldn’t you?

Jordan represents excellence and here are the core brand values. And you’d line that up with the core brand values of these individuals, there’s a marriage there, right? And what the symbol and that logo represents, is equated to that more so than an actual sport. Certainly it’s a mark that lives within a boundary of a sport, but the values associated with that iconic logo transcend those very boundaries just as he transcended those very boundaries.

So that’s the sort of paradigm shift in some of the conversations that we were having.

[Continue...The Mastermind - Erin Patton Interview PART 2]

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Get Erin Patton’s just-released book: Under the Influence: Tracing the Hip-Hop Generation’s Impact on Brands, Sports, & Pop Culture

Official Under The Influence website: www.undertheinfluence2009.com