Rob Strasser, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Rob Strasser comes up
Costco (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:31:16 David Rosenthal It's so funny, going back to our previous episode and Rob Strasser's, 10 principles at Nike, and like, on the one hand, the Nike principles and the Costco principles are about as far apart as you could imagine.
- ▶ 1:31:29 David Rosenthal On the other hand, Rob Strasser, Nike principle number 10 is, if we do the right things, we'll make money damn near automatic.
Nike (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 4:24 David Rosenthal Strasser is Julie Strasser, who was the wife of Rob Strasser.
- ▶ 4:30 David Rosenthal Now, Rob, if you've seen the movie Air, the character played by Jason Bateman,
- ▶ 4:36 David Rosenthal Is Rob Strasser, Nike's legendary first head of marketing.
- ▶ 4:43 David Rosenthal An item among many that is not discussed in the movie is that Rob, shortly after signing Jordan, had an enormous fight with Phil Knight, left the company with Peter Moore, who was the designer behind Jordan's, and ended up joining Adidas…
- ▶ 5:22 Ben Gilbert So, Strasser, we'll get into his contributions, but he is probably second only to Phil Knight in willing Nike into existence.
- ▶ 1:49:27 David Rosenthal Is that the court case with Onitsuka leads to one Rob Strasser.
- ▶ 1:49:41 David Rosenthal Strasser was the junior attorney at the Portland law firm that was working on the Nike case.
- ▶ 1:49:48 David Rosenthal And Strasser is just a force.
- ▶ 1:50:13 David Rosenthal Strasser is, I think, about six foot two.
- ▶ 1:50:25 David Rosenthal He gets the nickname within Nike of Rolling Thunder.
- ▶ 1:50:42 David Rosenthal So the first thing that Phil puts Rob in charge of is taking this really early sports marketing concept of doing sponsorship deals with athletes and blowing it out.
- ▶ 1:50:56 David Rosenthal So they had already, before Rob joined, done the first official sponsorship of an athlete with Ili Nastassi, the tennis player.
- ▶ 1:51:10 David Rosenthal When Strasser comes in, he starts doing sponsorships in a systematic manner.
- ▶ 1:51:42 David Rosenthal This leads then to a bigger initiative that Strasser puts together, and if you've watched the recent movie Air about Air Jordan, this totally gets played as like a Sonny Vaccaro thing.
- ▶ 1:51:55 David Rosenthal Strasser hires Sonny Vaccaro to come in and build the college basketball program for Nike, and this is another just equally
- ▶ 1:52:07 David Rosenthal So Strasser gets Sonny to go around the country and sign up coaches of the big basketball schools to become Nike coaches.
- ▶ 1:52:43 David Rosenthal So within a month of working on this, Strasser and Vaccaro have got UNLV, Georgetown, Texas, Arkansas.
- ▶ 1:53:54 David Rosenthal Strasser then takes the same playbook to college football.
- ▶ 1:56:40 David Rosenthal Strasser alone architected this grand strategy, or even, I'm not really sure that Phil or anybody at Nike understood this at this time, but certainly Strasser executes this in just an incredible way.
- ▶ 1:59:20 David Rosenthal Rob Strasser with going and doing a deal with Rudy.
- ▶ 1:59:36 David Rosenthal So still here in 1977, Strasser is just on fire.
- ▶ 1:59:57 David Rosenthal Strasser gets kind of pissed off one day, and he goes to his typewriter, and he fires off a memo.
- ▶ 2:00:37 Ben Gilbert Rob Strasser did.
- ▶ 2:04:32 David Rosenthal Nike principles, according to Rob Strasser in 1977.
- ▶ 2:06:05 Ben Gilbert No, this is stream of consciousness, all from Rob Strasser, all into the typewriter, and like, some of them are things that Nike would never say today because it shows the trade-offs inherent in their business.
- ▶ 2:06:36 Ben Gilbert Like, this is a foreshadow of Rob Strasser hating the bureaucracy at Nike after its IPO that we'll talk about in a second.
- ▶ 2:06:45 David Rosenthal Developing his own personal ambition.
- ▶ 2:06:47 Ben Gilbert And developing his own personal ambition.
- ▶ 2:06:51 Ben Gilbert So there's, like, so much in here that when you really start to know the company's history and story and the headspace that he was in when he punched this out, it reads entirely differently to me than I sort of used to just read it as a,…
- ▶ 2:15:19 Ben Gilbert There's a lot of little dynamics that we can be mad about, like, it was kind of Strasser's baby to do the deal, not Vaccaro's baby to do the deal.
- ▶ 2:17:49 David Rosenthal And it's actually Strasser who puts this deal together.
- ▶ 2:17:52 David Rosenthal And together with Sonny Vaccaro, as portrayed in the movie, goes after Jordan, but Strasser puts it all together.
- ▶ 2:32:36 David Rosenthal This was where Strasser, who again had masterminded all of this, the Jordan deal, the Jordan ones, working with his collaborator Peter Moore, all this stuff, they kind of went rogue.
- ▶ 2:33:26 David Rosenthal On top of that, as this is all happening, Strasser, and more too along with him, but, you know, really, Strasser is becoming increasingly rogue within Nike.
- ▶ 2:34:24 David Rosenthal Either Strasser is gonna become CEO of Nike, or Strasser's gonna leave Nike.
- ▶ 2:34:32 David Rosenthal And Strasser ain't gonna become CEO of Nike.
- ▶ 2:34:45 David Rosenthal So, really, this is the end for Strasser.
- ▶ 2:34:53 David Rosenthal Strasser leaves the company.
- ▶ 2:35:04 David Rosenthal All of which is fine, and you could imagine a future where one day Knight and Strasser might reconcile, and they could be friends again and say, wow, Rob, you've had such, you know, incredible part of the Nike journey, contribution to…
- ▶ 2:35:31 David Rosenthal Moves their North American headquarters to Portland, Oregon, and makes Strasser the CEO of Adidas America.
- ▶ 2:35:44 David Rosenthal Eight months into the job, Strasser has a massive heart attack and dies, I believe, at age 46.
- ▶ 2:36:09 David Rosenthal He's asked in the book Just Do It about Rob becoming CEO of Adidas, and he says, I know they, Adidas, aren't what they once were, but Adidas people were the Huns.
- ▶ 2:36:24 David Rosenthal And then when Rob dies, Phil does not attend his funeral.
- ▶ 2:36:29 Ben Gilbert There's a quote that sums it up in this Portland Monthly article that talks about why Strasser isn't known to many people outside the companies and why his role sort of fades into history.
- ▶ 2:36:56 Ben Gilbert For Nike, Strasser's overachievements are overshadowed, if not severely tarnished, because he was a traitor.
- ▶ 2:37:31 Ben Gilbert Strasser was his guy there?
- ▶ 2:37:34 David Rosenthal Strasser was his guy.
- ▶ 2:37:36 David Rosenthal Strasser leaves, starts this new company, starts working for Adidas, becomes the CEO of Adidas.
- ▶ 2:38:03 David Rosenthal Adidas with Strasser, not yet at the helm, but whispering in the ear, is gonna be willing to do a Jordan-type deal for Jordan.
- ▶ 2:39:19 David Rosenthal Now that Strasser and Moore are gone, Tinker is the star that he can give Jordan.
- ▶ 3:39:58 Ben Gilbert Rob Strasser wrote this in an internal memo.
- ▶ 3:40:12 David Rosenthal I see your Rob Strasser quote, and I will one-up you a Phil Knight quote.
- ▶ 3:40:57 Ben Gilbert Interestingly enough, too, in this Rob Strasser quote, where he says,
- ▶ 3:47:00 Ben Gilbert I think Nike didn't see exactly what was coming with Kanye, but I do think they realized, hmm, our entire brand is built on celebrating athletes, and while we should be in business with celebrities in some way, shape, and form, I mean,…