Steve Stoute — who has managed artists like Mary J. Blige and Nas and crafted groundbreaking ad campaigns like Beyonce’s Samsung partnership and Dr. Dre’s Beats advertisements — has built a career by understanding the interplay of culture, music and capitalism and translating these dynamics for corporate America.
Companies from Meta to McDonald’s (Stoute came up with the famous “I’m Lovin’ It” slogan) rely on him as a go-to advisor, while power players like Jay-Z and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver call for advice.
In fact, Stoute was key in creating excitement around The Nets’ move from New Jersey to Brooklyn in 2012, which gave the borough its first major sports team in 55 years. His “Hello Brooklyn” campaign rallied the borough to view the team as its own.
“One of the things that I’m proud of is that we moved the Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn,” Stoute, who grew up in Queens and now lives in Tribeca, told me.
The 55-year-old got his start in the music business, as an executive at Sony and, later, Interscope Geffen A&M Records where he ran the urban music division and nurtured artists like Will Smith. He launched the advertising and branding firm Translation in 2004 and the music distribution company UnitedMasters in 2017, with backing from Apple, Andreessen Horowitz and Alphabet.
“You start off in the business essentially by noticing a phenomenon, and then all of a sudden you’re marketing that phenomenon,” Stoute explained of the vision behind his first company, Translation. “And our job is to come up with messaging and ideas and events in a language that connects with a certain subsection of society.”
He said that, as social media has led to the proliferation of niche audiences and fandoms, companies have to be fast and agile to target them.
“Brands are being created overnight,” Stoute said. “You can compete — and you can create an audience around your brand very quickly.”
Kim Kardashian had a built-in audience when she recognized in 2019 that a subsection of women didn’t want more Spanx — they wanted to embrace their curves.
“One of the things that they [Skims co-founders Kim Kardashian, Emma Grede and Jens Grede] realized is that, when Spanx came out, the idea was a woman always wanted to be sucked in. And that silhouette was aspirational” at the time, Stoute said. “Then all of a sudden, it shifted where you wanted to be sucked in in certain places, but you wanted hips.”
The need to quickly reflect the changing status quo is true for every industry, in a way it wasn’t in the past.
“Obviously, that is very disruptive to the incumbent, [who formerly held a] position of dominance because they could never get disrupted,” Stoute said. “And now that’s changed. So that’s the biggest shift — that you can’t get comfortable.”
Companies often come to him in search of their new niche and advice on how to develop it.
“You have to be in a constant state of innovation… you got to be willing to say, let me make the thing that threatens me most,” Stoute said.
His initial breakthrough came when he worked on the music for “Men in Black” while at Sony in 1997. While the movie’s soundtrack sold 10 million copies, Ray-Ban earned even more revenue than the record label because Will Smith wore their sunglasses in the movie. Stoute took notice.
“And I thought, if I can impact culture like that with music, imagine what I could do with advertising,” Stoute adds.
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That spark pushed him to launch Translation, where he crafted promotional campaigns for Nas with Reebok and Wrigley’s Doublemint campaign with Chris Brown.
But he tends to keep his personal opinions buttoned up at work, and advises most clients to do the same.
“I just think that whether it’s religion or politics, those are probably two things you should stay out of,” Stoute added. “It’s popular to talk about politics… but when celebrities have long discussions about politics in order to gain an audience or gain favor, that they’re doing a disservice to society because they don’t have.
“It’s not my job to have a point of view on what people like or don’t like,” Stoute said. “As a professional, my job is to execute.”
He’s also bridged the gap between record labels and artists. Well before Taylor Swift popularized the concept of artists owning their masters, his UnitedMaster was distributing music without taking ownership of masters or publishing rights.
“A lot of artists have put in a lot of great work and have gone broke,” he explained. “I wanted the artists to turn themselves into owners.”
That focus on empowering others may be one key to his longevity.
“I’ve built a company that’s about understanding culture as a through line and connecting people,” he says. “Doing that for 22 years as an independent is something I’m proud of.”
