that means to radiate virginity and innocence, to warble in a high-pitched,
childlike voice, to prance around and dress as if they were in a cutesy Hello
Kitty cartoon.
Pendleton’s office was relieved when, despite the horrific product-
launch skits, sales of the Galaxy S4 in the opening months turned out to be
strong. In fact, two months after the faux-glamour event, in June 2013,
Samsung surpassed Apple as the biggest smartphone maker in the United
States.
Clearly something was working. And now the company had a chance to
put its silly launch behind it.
—
THROUGH HIS FRIEND AND sponsorship partner LeBron James, Todd
Pendleton linked up with the rapper Jay-Z. The rapper’s representatives
first approached Samsung after hearing about Pendleton’s deals with NBA
stars.
With the help of Mitch Kanner in the White Glove program, someone
who ate pizza with Jay-Z in his mansion, Samsung began its campaign to
convince the rapper to enter a massive sponsorship with the company.
The thing was, Jay-Z had to like his Samsung phone if he was going to
be of use. Luckily, Jay-Z quickly became enamored with the Galaxy for all
sorts of reasons. One of them was business.
“The soul of a hustler, I really ran the streets / A CEO’s mind, that
marketing plan was me,” he once rapped. This from the ex–drug dealer
who once quipped, “I’m a business, man.”
Jay-Z was an entrepreneur with his own label, Roc Nation, who got his
start on the streets of New York, struggling in his midtwenties to sell CDs
out of his car, unable to find a label willing to take a bet on him. His early
career, defined by failure, had an upside: He wasn’t beholden to a sluggish
music industry that struggled to foresee trends and that, in the age of social
media disruption, was quickly approaching its sunset.
“First of all, we’re in a dying business, everybody sees that,” he told Fast
Company. “So what am I supposed to do, just sit here and wait to get to
zero before I do something?”
Samsung was Jay-Z’s answer to the music industry’s decline, and Todd
Pendleton saw an opportunity. They began lining up a deal to tie the release