Steve Stoute gets a lot of phone calls — entrepreneurs pitching ideas, fellow chief executives looking for advice, Jay-Z.
One title doesn’t fully capture what Mr. Stoute, 54, does. In fact, he has a few: chief executive and founder of UnitedMasters, a music distribution company, and Translation, a marketing agency. But those also don’t reflect the scope of his influence across the worlds of entertainment, advertising, technology and politics.
Many high-powered people — including Adam Silver, the commissioner of the National Basketball Association; Lorraine Twohill, the chief marketing officer at Google; and Jared Kushner, the investor and presidential son-in-law — go to the former music label executive for guidance about things such as their next business move, how to navigate the current political climate or where pop culture is headed.
How did he get here? He name-checks record deals and ad campaigns over the years with Beyoncé, Enrique Iglesias, Lady Gaga, Mary J. Blige and Nas. His current clients include McDonald’s, Beats by Dre and Meta.
On a recent afternoon at Sadelle’s — a restaurant in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami that Mr. Stoute is an investor in — nearly a dozen people swung by the table to say hello and catch him up on the latest in their lives.
Among them was Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami. “He’s someone that people that are important rely on for advice and counsel,” Mr. Suarez said. “I think that’s a testament to what he’s accomplished,” he added, “and to his personality.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What are people asking you about right now?
A lot of my network is very close to the decision makers in D.C. They want to get a sense of what I think. The fragrance of my feeling.
A lot of successful people are surrounded by people who won’t tell them the truth. My No. 1 attribute is that I tell the truth. The second most important thing is that I have a certain level of intelligence, street smarts or experience or whatever it may be. But the first thing is the truth.
So what are you advising corporate clients to do?
Most of what I’ve been advising clients around is the idea of not overreacting to anything in a press cycle.
What used to be Silicon Valley-only nerd stuff has now become popular in real time. Look, as much as I believe that a lot of technology is beneficial for business, I think that trying to figure it out and overreact to the press around it in order to appease your boss or seem like you know what you’re talking about requires more time than what you’re giving yourself.
That’s inclusive of A.I. right now. A.I. is going to take over advertising, A.I. is going to dominate music. I’m just like, “Guys, let’s wait a second.”
What are you telling them to stay away from?
I’m telling celebrities to get out of politics, man.
You work with a lot of consumer brands. They are on the front lines of issues that can get politicized. What do you think they should do?
They’re not allowing themselves to get pulled into that conversation. I don’t know if ketchup or condiments or shaving equipment or skin care are getting caught up in that.
This year feels like a turning point in terms of companies not wanting to be too vocal about D.E.I. or advertising aimed at any one group. Is there anything that you have to do differently because it might get called out?
No. At UnitedMasters, we put out country music, we put out Spanish music, we put out Christian music, we put out rap music. We put out music from America, from South America, from Africa, from Korea. We’re in the music business, not the Black or white music business.
At Translation, we’re a creative solutions company. We represent the N.B.A., we represent Lego, we represent Meta. We represent a diverse group of companies.
We’re not focusing all of our work on making sure that Black people buy the thing. We market to segments of people through values. Whether you’re Black, white, Hispanic, whatever, if those are values that you gravitate toward, then we’re going to speak to you.
Are tariffs affecting the advertising or music businesses?
The uncertainty around tariffs affects many different businesses and partners that we have. China is a big market for the N.B.A., so you got to deal with that. Apple is a partner and investor in our company. They make their products in China. That’s an issue. We have banking clients: How does this affect interest rates and loans?
So what do you do in a moment like this?
I have to speak a lot to my clients and really get a sense of what’s keeping them up at night. That’s cliché. But what aspect of this are they most worried about?
The uncertainty creates volatility, and that volatility affects their ability to forecast and spend, and pricing and productivity. How do you plan when you have uncertainty? You don’t have a clear perspective on what to do because you don’t know what you’re optimizing for.
You grew up in Queens with Trinidadian parents. What lessons did you learn from them?
There were three things that I have carried with me for my whole life: the work ethic, principles and cleanliness.
Values have value. You should have people around you in your life who have strong principles. They stand behind ideas, and they don’t move because it’s convenient or because there’s money. I learned that from my dad and my mom. The world has changed, and some of the things they said don’t matter anymore — not those three things.
What did your parents do for work?
My dad worked on ships. He was a marine engineer, and he had other odd jobs. My mom started as a housekeeper, then became a nurse’s aide, a registered nurse and then climbed the ranks of nursing. She came up from the bottom.
You started your advertising agency in 2004. Back then, much of it was focused on helping translate urban and street culture for Fortune 500 companies. Do you think hip-hop is still the cultural force it once was?
I’ve always thought hip-hop — obviously, I wrote a book on this — plays a very important role in a lot of things that drive culture. Period. I also think that it’s as relevant as it’s ever been.
When you think about hip-hop and its influence, don’t just think about music sales. Hip-hop is streetwear. Hip-hop is Pharrell designing Louis Vuitton. Hip-Hop is Jay-Z, the billionaire. It’s all of these things.
You went into advertising after a successful career in the music industry. What did you learn about yourself while making that pivot?
Being fearless is a principle I learned from my parents. The idea of being scared scares me. I learned that about by myself. I didn’t know the industry. I didn’t flinch because of that.
As you were entering the advertising world, you were able to win McDonald’s as a client and were instrumental in its “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign. How did you do that?
The executives at McDonald’s at that time, in 2004, were struggling. They knew they had to do something dramatic. What the Golden Arches stood for needed to be contemporized.
Tell me more about the role you played in that campaign.
Every agency that represents McDonald’s is in the room and at a table, and the number of representatives you had at the table was equivalent to the size of your business with them. So if you had the biggest chunk, you had five people.
And it was just me.
The key question was how come there were different tag lines around the world. Why is it “smile” in America and “happy” in Asia and “joy” in Germany? When they went around the room, every answer was because you can’t come up with a line that means everything to everybody because of translations. Then when it got to me, I disagreed.
If I said “I love you,” that works everywhere around the world. That got me deeper into the idea. I brought in Pharrell and Pusha T and Justin Timberlake, and it was around that creative process that “I’m Lovin’ It” came out.
In actuality, it was a collaborative effort between ourselves and other creative companies that worked with McDonald’s. But the key insight was that meeting.
Now you’re working with McDonald’s again. What’s the key question now?
There’s this whole idea around contemporary African Americans. They are moving forward in a big way: success, big aspirations, big dreams and unapologetic about it. How you speak, in my opinion, to a contemporary mind-set around African American culture and African Americans is much different.
I think we are the best at understanding that. With UnitedMasters, we have the artists and intelligence and understanding of consumer culture, young adult culture and how music and sport affect consumers’ decisions.
I think McDonald’s just wanted some of that sauce.
When you appeared in this column back in 2012, you mentioned that you used to make employees sign a constitution related to values. Have any of those values changed since then?
I don’t think any of the core values have changed since I started the company in 2004. I don’t make anybody sign anything anymore. We focus on the mission, values of the company, like having people understand, challenge and respect.
What I’ve realized is that one of the things you lose when people are not working in the same physical space is that Zoom allows you to avoid conflict. Anytime there’s something that would lead to a conflict, they could avoid it because they’re not in each other’s face.
Getting people comfortable around challenge in a respectful way is a very important value because what I’m trying to do is have people embrace the idea that it’s OK to disagree.
If there’s no conflict, then there’s something wrong.
How do you get colleagues to face up to conflicts?
By talking about it a lot. The same way I talk about bonuses or health care or wins or losses, we talk about conflict. If tension gets overlooked, then the company will not reach its full potential.
How do you keep things in balance when you know that not everyone is going to be on the same page?
The core of our company is the convergence of culture, technology and storytelling. People have to be prolific at two of the three, because that’s the magic to disrupting any industry or incumbent. It’s the power of telling stories, using technology to scale and being able to embrace, connect and be in lock step with culture.
Just think of the archetypes: a technologist from Silicon Valley, a kid from Brooklyn or Harlem who understands culture deeply and a writer from Los Angeles. Working together, there are going to be conflicting perspectives. If I don’t have conflict resolution in the DNA of our company, then we’re not optimizing the best way we can.
Time for the lightning round. What have you learned from your company’s youngest workers?
That we’re not fast enough on social media.
Do you use A.I.? If so, what was the last question you asked it?
I use A.I. for search. The last question I asked was about converting money.
What are you trying to learn about right now?
The future economics of podcasting.
What’s your favorite podcast?
Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay.”
What’s your best advice for jet lag?
Cold plunge.
In hindsight, what’s a decision you would have made differently?
I don’t have anything like that. I live in the present.
How much sleep do you get, and when?
Five hours. 2 to 7 a.m.
How do you sign off your emails?
Much respect.
Jordyn Holman is a business reporter for The Times, covering the retail industry and consumer behavior.
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