Translation Advertising: Where Shop Meets Hip-Hop

It was while running the urban-music divisions at Interscope and Sony, Stoute says, that he recognized the growing influence of and overlap between consumer products and entertainment. The light went on in 1997, after he executive-produced the sound track for the film Men in Black. As it turned out, the movie's tie-in Ray-Ban sunglasses outsold the record. Three years later, the New York City native quit the music business and switched to advertising full time. "I knew that I could sell more sneakers and cameras than records," he says, "and there was the opportunity for me to go into that." (See the 25 best back-to-school gadgets.)

Initially, he partnered with longtime adman Peter Arnell, head of AG Brand Consulting, in 1999. Arnell, the quintessential insider, worked with Stoute to bring an outsider's point of view to the corporate suites. "I like to say I'm a cultural anthropologist," says Stoute. "I'm paying attention to what's going on. I'm looking at why people start wearing baggy pants or what is in their iPod playlists, like how there is rap in a white kid's life when it is a black person's music and how Coldplay is on a black kid's iPod when it's not marketed to blacks."

Understanding where culture has the reach that marketers crave but can't harness, Stoute moves in. "I take advantage. I look where companies fall short in understanding how consumers are interpreting their products and services. My world is the blurring of those lines." (Get the latest gadget news and reviews at Techland.com.)

Now Stoute is poised to translate the biggest trend on the horizon, what he calls "the tanning of America." The growing African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American populations together command an estimated $2 trillion in buying power. And they have become hugely influential trendsetters. Demographers know this, but Stoute sees the shift as a massive cultural transformation that most companies are missing.

According to Stoute, this seismic shift has ushered in an era of shared cultural tastes and attitudes. The tanning concept, he says, is built around not the physical reality of different racial makeups but rather what he calls "a shared mental complexion." To make a brand relevant, companies need to understand that multicultural advertising is no longer a niche strategy: multicultural is what America looks like. "One of the things that made me realize right away that Steve was an innovative thinker was when I heard him talking about the tanning of America," says Pamela El, marketing vice president of State Farm. "He said that advertisers and marketers need to follow the lay of the land, and the face of America is changing." Stoute took LeBron James to State Farm, managing to make King James both relevant and funny in ads for insurance. (See pictures of expensive things that money can buy.)

Stoute launched Translation three years ago, bringing in a business partner, Jay-Z, who has also racked up an impressive set of entrepreneurial bona fides to match his musical prowess. The two are majority stakeholders, while advertising giant IPG owns a minority stake. Stoute says the move to exist under IPG's $6 billion global umbrella helps smooth his entrée and access to big corporations.

It's a place where he thinks he can help redefine the concept of big. "As a general rule, I am looking to work with companies that are big market leaders that have issues." He says the goal is to tap the veins of pop culture and young consumers to push brands that are liked to be brands that are loved. "We try to manifest conversations," says Stoute. The traditional agency model of telling people what to buy or how to think, he says, is broken. "It limits the possibility of how far is far."

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