Reg Hamlett is the General Manager for the Central Territory at Nike. He is a widower raising his two sons in Chicago, IL.
Q: What is your current role at Nike and how did you get there?
A: My title is General Manager of the central territory for Nike. The United States is divided into three territories and then add Canada for the fourth territory in North America. I’m responsible for the business and the brand of Nike in those middle twenty states of the country. All marketing, all sales, community relations, media relations that relate to the Nike brand come through my team of about 65 people.
My career has been a little bit of everything and this job is a perfect intersection of all the things I’ve been into professionally. I’m a marketer by genetics. By DNA that’s my core bloodline. But I’ve also done supply chain. I’ve done my own thing from a consulting standpoint. I’ve done a lot of market research. I’ve worked in a variety of industries from pharmaceuticals to consumer packaged goods. But I’d say over the past five to eight years my career really took on an urban youth slant. I was doing some market research stuff at a small little boutique agency: A lot of ethnography; a lot of in-home stuff with young kids around “what’s hot, what’s next, what’s new”. I left that and parlayed it into Vice President of marketing for the YMCA in New York doing a lot of branch level programming around youth and youth programs. That position led me to EA SPORTS and there I got into more of the digital side, working with a hot brand for a lot of young kids.
Nike as a brand fits in a space that I like. I can’t sell any widgets, so for me it’s about being in a space, that I dig from a consumer standpoint, with a brand that I’m a fan of from an affinity standpoint. And then having the ability to be a leader and really guide a team across a variety of business levers to make it work.
Q: What are the most exciting and inspiring aspects of your job?
A: By far the most exciting aspect is the product development process. Working at Nike in some ways is like working for a fashion brand. I just got back from Magic [Fashion Expo] a couple weeks ago out in Vegas. We’re looking to show our holiday 2010 line to our major urban retailers. So going through the process around colorways and fabrics and technology and the product stories is really fascinating to me. I get into that part of it and how that connects with the consumers and how we get insights to drive inspiration.
I also like having a great team. I have marketing and sales cats on my team that are doing everything from brand activation around the Chicago Marathon to working with retailers who are doing events like the hot Yeezy launch from last year and everything in between. I like the team aspect; I like the energy of having a team that is really getting after it in a variety of functions.
Q: How has being a dad shaped your career and day-to-day business decisions?
A: Being a dad is why I get up in the morning. I mean, I don’t know about other people but I don’t really dig working. If I had my way I’d be on the beach writing poetry and watching the sun rise and set every day. The reality is that I have to feed my family and in doing that I’ve got to make choices around what they see and how they see me live my life. There’s a certain amount of just getting up every day and strapping it on that they need to see because hard work is required. I’m a widower so to the extent that my whole world has changed post my wife’s death it’s about holding our head high and not wallowing in the misery of her death and trying to still get after it. In a lot of ways it is role model stuff. It is the reason why I do what I do so they can have unlimited access to their dreams and really tap into their own potential and live their best life. And, oh by the way, it’s nice to work with a cool brand that my kids dig. Whether it was EA SPORTS and bringing home games that they got into or bringing home fresh kicks, there is a certain amount of social currency for them in what I do. So I do kind of pick my career channel based on a variety of things but one of them is certainly is “is it something I’m proud of and something that my kids are excited about”.
Q: Ever use the cultural insights of your boys in the Nike boardrooms?
A: All the time. My oldest in that nouveau Black kid. He likes skateboarding and he likes Madden. He like hip hop and he likes Jimi Hendrix. He is an amalgamation of a lot of media influences today. Style-wise he’s that skinny jeans kid that rocks dunks more than he rocks Air Force One’s. So his perspective on what’s a hot color; what’s a good looking shoe; what fits with his wardrobe definitely influences some of the stuff I think about. But more than that, it’s less about product and more around lifestyle. I’ll watch him do his homework and he’ll have his MAC open; he’ll have YouTube or some video stuff playing; he’ll be talking to his boys; his little brother will come in his room and I’m like “man how can you focus on your homework with all that’s going on?” But the reality is that’s just how they do it. When we think about the insights we start to realize that these kids are like their own MACs. My son has always got an application in his life open and he just toggles back and forth.
Q: How do you balance work with raising your boys?
A: It’s trial and error. I’ll be honest. The reality is when my wife died I took a year off of work and just didn’t work and really was the at-home dad: At the bus stop picking up my oldest; taking my youngest, who at the time was 18 months old, to daycare and all that kind of stuff. We were really just trying to go through the grieving process and doing a lot of grief counseling and support groups for the kids, my oldest in particular. After a year of doing that it felt like we had at least scrubbed the pipes enough on our grief that we could go forward. I got back in the corporate game at that point in time. From then on the gigs that I’ve had have been sexy, they’ve been challenging. There’s a fair amount of travelling and a fair amount of hours in them and it is just trial and error. It is true that my support network, my family, my friends, my village, if you will, make it work. If I didn’t have the cousins I had down in Orlando when I was down there being helpful from a babysitting standpoint when I traveled, it wouldn’t have worked. Now that I’m here in Chicago I’ve got good friends here and I’ve been blessed to find a phenomenal young sister who’s a college student and my full time babysitter in the midst of her college career. She’s like the little sister I never had or the big sister for my boys. It has been a God send. It allows me to feel free to travel knowing that they’re well taken care of and that they get that I’m out really trying to make it happen for our family and my kids are proud. There are definitely times when I’m travelling way too much or I have major presentations going on and need to bring work home, but by and large the ability to balance it is a direct function of how strong my support network is.
Q: What brands and/or memories from your childhood do you try to pass on to the boys?
A: It’s funny you ask that. I’m a child of the 70s, so before I answer the brand question, I will say that there was a brand in the 70s called “Gifted Black Kid.” Not a literal brand it was more a virtual concept. Post civil rights stress, strain and strife there was a sense that this generation, meaning me and my peers, were coming through doors that our forefathers had busted down and so the expectation was you could get in every gifted program and you could really achieve your dreams. There was a positive influence everywhere you went: the barbershop, the church, the neighborhood, everybody on the block was looking out for you. So, as much as anything, I try to bring that vibe into the present day for them. The sense of Black consciousness doesn’t feel the same. Not better or worse, just different. So I try to bring that vibe forward.
Within that there are things that I remember that I try to bring forth. Music is number one. 70s sound, that rich R&B sound that was lyrically on point plays in our house all the time and that really matters a lot to me. We tell stories off of that content. In terms of brands, from that same era, we try to bring brands forth like School House Rock. I remember “Conjunction Junction” or “I’m Just a Bill” or “Verb”, which was my first Black super hero. So we bring that forward. I bought that DVD set for them awhile ago and they dig it. They’re learning their preambles through that kind of stuff. We bring forward 70s franchises like Star Wars and talk about Luke and Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. We go into the back story around Anakin and look at the duality between Anakin and Luke.
So we talk about it in that context so from my standpoint it gives them a depth. It gives them a sense of grounding in terms of who they are. So they’re not just dealing with a very fast, somewhat superficial world of 2010. We feel retro, but it’s very contemporary at the same time. Bringing forward that vibe and feeling of the 70s is very important to me and how I raise my boys.
