Athlete Branding Masterclass with Zoe Scaman

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A special episode on how British Basketball players can build their brands and engage with fans. Skylar Smith and Brian Bosche speak with Zoe Scaman, founder of Bodacious, a strategy studio. Zoe has worked with clients like adidas, Coco-Cola, Nike, and various athletes and celebrities. They talk about what athletes can do to build a strong brand, how a brand can evolve over a career, how athletes can work with brands and sponsors, and specific advice on what young athletes can do to start and grow their brand. They also discuss how British basketball clubs and players can grow the culture of the sport in the UK.

Full Transcript:

Skylar Smith:
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the High Tea Hoops podcast. This is Skylar, the Duchess of hoops, here with Brian, the Duke of hoops. As always, Brian, how's it going?

Brian Bosche:
Great, Skylar, can't wait for the episode and interview today.

Skylar Smith:
It's going to be a really fun episode. We're so excited today to be here with Zoe Scaman, the founder of Bodacious, a strategy studio where she's worked with brands like Adidas, Pepsi, and Coca Cola. Zoe, how's it going?

Zoe Scaman:
It is, thank you, bit dark in rainy London, but other than that, all positive.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Skylar Smith:
It's a bit dark where we are too. Thanks so much for being on today. Do you want to start off by just telling us a little bit about your background?

Zoe Scaman:
I can, yes. I'll give you a bit of a whistle-stop tour. So, I started working in ad agencies when I was 18, so went straight into one and it was a lucky place to be, and I worked my way up from there. I moved to Australia, so I lived in Sydney for five years. Worked in advertising agencies over there. I did Share a Coke, which was the names on cans that you might've seen around the world. So, that was when I was 26. So, I basically peaked at 26 and it's all been downhill from there.

Brian Bosche:
No.

Zoe Scaman:
Oh yes, and then I moved back to London, moved into innovation management consultancy, moved to New York for a bit then came back again. So, I've worked all over the place, and yeah, I've been super lucky to work with brands such as, as you mentioned, Pepsi Co., Coca-Cola, I've worked with Nike, Girl Foundation in Ethiopia, I worked with Adidas on a bunch of different projects over the years, and then, yeah. It's just been a huge mix of, now, celebrities, but also obviously big consumer brands as well.

Skylar Smith:
And we really got excited to talk to you from this tweet that we stumbled across. I'm going to read it. That might be weird for me to read your own tweets. I'm going to do it anyways.

Zoe Scaman:
Go for it.

Skylar Smith:
You said, "Last week, I won a contract with the NBA to build out a brand fandom and new commercial model for a superstar player and his wider team. Today I've won a contract to create a brand new global fashion label from scratch for Amazon, and you know what? I'm fucking proud of myself." Let's just-

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. So, let's go, Zoe.

Skylar Smith:
... right off the bat, snaps.

Zoe Scaman:
Yes. Thank you.

Skylar Smith:
Snaps for a woman in the industry. I will love to see it.

Zoe Scaman:
Yes.

Skylar Smith:
But we were so interested in this branding for this superstar player in the NBA. I'm sure it's pretty locked down. Is there anything you can tell us about this?

Zoe Scaman:
I could probably tell you some tiny bits. Obviously the team is NBA, so that's based in the US. It may be the... I don't know how to actually hint at this without giving it away. He's a very young player, he's super up and coming. He had an insane season in the bubble. Yeah, and he is-

Skylar Smith:
I feel like I've got some guesses already.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah. You probably know who I'm talking about, but yeah. Absolutely incredible, and it's a really amazing opportunity to do something like this, and then obviously to think about building something for the team as well.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
And also just hopefully starting to influence a new direction for all players within the NBA and all teams within the NBA and obviously the wider league itself to start to think about, how could we do this better? But it's always been such a culturally relevant, entertaining sport to watch, but that cultural relevance and that entertainment is starting to decline slightly.

Zoe Scaman:
Not because it hasn't necessarily continued to be super entertaining to watch, but because the way that the media landscape is shifting and the way that younger people are shifting in terms of how they're consuming that level of content, and also what we're competing against with eyeballs, E-sports, Twitch, TikTok. It's all time and attention, and unless we start moving the NBA to match that stride, it's going to suffer in the next couple of years.

Skylar Smith:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Zoe Scaman:
But yeah. It's exciting. I'm learning a lot about basketball at the moment, which I don't think I'm anywhere necessarily near to the level of expertise that you guys have on it, but I'm trying. I definitely binge watched Last Dance a couple of times thinking I might learn-

Brian Bosche:
Nice.

Zoe Scaman:
... something amazing, but not yet.

Skylar Smith:
I feel like so many people are getting into basketball or getting back into basketball after taking a little time off through the Last Dance. That's been the catalyst for this surge of basketball fans this year. It's really cool to see.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's one of those things where, again, it's about a connection to an individual athlete and it's the story of Michael Jordan and just-

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
... his incredible rise, his life, his experiences, and I think sometimes you need, or not sometimes, all the time, you need those kinds of human stories to reconnect you to a sport and to make you a fun all over again, and to make you realize how fucking hard that person works to get to where they were and actually what they built, and it was so much more than him being an exceptional athlete. He was an all-rounder in every sense of the word, and I think that that influence and that connection to that one individual is something that we need to start rebuilding again.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah, for sure. I think Jordan is definitely someone who, as an athlete, has one of the strongest brands. I'm curious what you think goes into a really strong brand for an athlete, and Jordan's, it's obviously still a very strong brand, but he's out of the game at this point. What athletes are you seeing that are currently playing that you think are doing branding really well? Have a really strong personal brand?

Zoe Scaman:
I don't know if there's necessarily anyone that I think has an incredible brand. I mean, I'm going to say LeBron, obviously, for NBA, but let's put him to one side because he's not necessarily an up and comer in any way.

Zoe Scaman:
I think more so, I've been looking at what's been happening with the NFL, and there's one particular player that I've had my on for the last couple of months, maybe a year or so, and I think he's just absolutely smashing it, and that is JuJu Smith-Schuster. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, but he is-

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
Yes.

Skylar Smith:
He is a genius in terms of actually what he's doing with his personal brand. So, he's got over 2 million followers on TikTok, he started JuJu TV on YouTube.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Skylar Smith:
He's got a decent Twitter following as well. He understands that creating content that is not necessarily just around his sport and his athleticism, but also who he is as a person. What he's interested in, what fashion he likes, the fact that he's a gamer, the fact that he's got an insanely gorgeous dog called Boujee, who is now actually built a brand around as well. Boujee's actually got an agency to actually represent the dog, which is crazy.

Skylar Smith:
So, in times of like dog food partnerships and those kind of stuff, he's got a merch line that he's created, and I don't think there's any stopping him at the moment, and I think he's really understanding the fact that the locus of his brand is absolutely on the field and as an athlete, but there's more to him than that. He's a fully rounded fan.

Skylar Smith:
He's a fan in his own right of gaming. He's done a lot of Twitch stuff with Ninja, Travis Scott, Drake, et cetera, and I think he just understands that his fans are just as multifaceted as he is, and that's a way for him to start connecting with them on new levels and really bringing them closer into his orbit. So, I think he's been super impressive to watch.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. That-

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah. That's such a good point that these athletes are so multifaceted and so many times we are just seeing this one side of them, but I think fans really do want to see all these different sides and all their different interests. That's how you can really form connections with them and feel like you know them, and I feel like it's so important in athlete branding.

Skylar Smith:
Yes.

Zoe Scaman:
Brian, I'm sorry. I think I cut you off.

Brian Bosche:
No, I was just going to say, when we talk about the British basketball community and how do you get these players to connect with their audience, more connect with their fans, and we talked a little bit about, before the show, where it's almost like everyone follows the players instead of the teams, and so how do you elevate those individuals? And so my question is, when you start working with these athletes, what kind of plan do you put together? How do you even start this relationship and start to put together goals for their individual brands?

Zoe Scaman:
I think it's about trying to figure out who they are as people and what they're interested in and what their passions are and what they're inspired by, and it's so critical. I'm not sure if you saw the study that came out a couple of weeks ago that was on Morning Consult that was essentially saying that from a Gen Z perspective, only about 53% of them now identify as sports fans, that's it. So, that's a huge, huge decrease, and they are much more likely to follow individual players than they are teams as well.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
And again, when they're looking at these players, as I mentioned with being multifaceted, they want to know every inch of those players. They want to know, if you are a gamer, what's your favorite game? If you are into sneakers, what is the thing that drives your sneaker head obsession? Are you a streetwear aficionado? Do you prefer high-end labels? What music do you listen to?

Zoe Scaman:
Are you into watches or bracelets or something like that? There's so much potential to bring people close there, and I think what tends to happen is, we look at athletes in a very one-dimensional sense. So, we look at them when they're playing, we look at their stats, we look at in-game and then we look at how they're talking about themselves and their training and their game off the field, and that's it.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
But the difficulty with that is then if an athlete comes across as one-dimensional and only talks about the game and their play, you only fit into one dimension of a fan's life and that's problematic, and you need to actually broaden your relationship with them in many different ways. So, let me start looking at athletes and actually where they begin. We look at asking them lots of different questions. So, we ask them, are you into music? What are you into? Are you a foodie? What's your favorite song at the moment that you keep listening to?

Zoe Scaman:
Do you carry your console around with you? In between games, for example, do you use it as a form of relaxation? There's so much in there and they basically just vomit all of this stuff up onto us, and then the next thing for us to do is to try and distill that down into, who is this person? Then what are the different facets of this person? You don't want to make too much of it, so you don't want them to have like 12 different facets that you're going to try and build around, but it's much more around, okay, what are the three or four big things that we can build your persona around? And we can go from there.

Zoe Scaman:
And someone like a Steph Curry has been doing this for a long time, so his three things are family, faith and the game. Those are the things that he builds his entire brand around, and it's just a really easy shorthand to actually see what content deals he goes after, but also more importantly, he says no to. So, a lot of athletes are approached for a lot of different things. You can't be a yes man or a yes woman in many cases.

Zoe Scaman:
You can't say yes to everything. You need to have a lens through which you say, "Is this right for me? Does this fit?" And you can really only get there if you start to understand yourself and actually what you want to put out into the culture, what you want your contribution to be, how you want to build your fandoms, and that's the way that we start to do it. And a lot of the time, talking of JuJu Smith-Schuster, he is a member of FaZe Clan. He's an investor in place as well-

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
... I believe, and FaZe Clan are the epitome of doing this really bloody well. So, if you think about how FaZe Clan started, it was all about trick shots that they put onto YouTube and they'd put music over the top of it, and it was entertaining.

Brian Bosche:
Yep.

Zoe Scaman:
When they did that, they started growing their E-sports fan base who were interested in E-sports, and then bright sparks that they are, they were like, "Hang on a second. These E-sports fans are also interested in merch. They're also interested in jackass style YouTube content."

Brian Bosche:
Yep.

Zoe Scaman:
"They're also interested in collabs that we might do with other people. So, we're going to make content that fits into all of those different areas that they might go into. So, we're not always playing games. Sometimes we are doing pranks to each other. Sometimes we're releasing a new drop, a partnership with a fashion label." Obviously, they've come out and they've created Control, which is their nutrition brand now, which is like [inaudible 00:11:59], but for E-sports.

Brian Bosche:
Yep.

Zoe Scaman:
And then they've also got a horror movie that's come out like last week where it actually got FaZe Rug who starred in the horror movie and they've done it brilliantly, so it's shot like a live stream would be.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
And it's because they realized that their fans are multifaceted, and then when they create that content, when they start going into music content or fashion content or horror movies, what they're doing is, they're then going into new fandoms that maybe don't know anything about E-sports and don't know anything about FaZe Clan, and they're pulling them closer and they're going, "Oh, these FaZe Clan guys are interesting. They do really funny prank content on YouTube."

Zoe Scaman:
For example, or, "I love their merch line." And then that ends up pulling those disparate fandoms into E-sports fandom, and then so the cycle repeats itself. So, their fandoms get bigger and bigger and bigger because they're augmenting them with different interests-

Brian Bosche:
And feeding off each other.

Zoe Scaman:
... which are multifaceted.

Skylar Smith:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Zoe Scaman:
Exactly that. And that's the goal when it comes to actually how you brand an athlete, is yes, you've got your sports fandom, so you might have your NBA fans, basketball fans, but you also need to think about how are you going to go and find different fandoms and then bring them into the game, and you do that by appealing to different facets of who you are as a person and an athlete.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. We hear that all the time where London has an incredible music scene. There's incredible fashion and basketball, and basketball is at the intersection of all of that. So, it's okay. If you're interested in fashion, we had DeAndre Liggins on from the London Lions and he is all about being a fit King.

Brian Bosche:
Just walking down Regent Street, Instagram Live-ing, him going shopping, he has a new fit every day. Byron was talking about him just wearing London Lions merch into every practice where DeAndre's rolling up in a new outfit every single day, but I completely understand, and that makes so much sense where you do find the crossover and you bring people into basketball, maybe through their love of music or through their love-

Zoe Scaman:
Yes.

Brian Bosche:
... of fashion-

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
... and it feeds off of it.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah, and that's exactly how it should be, because sport now, especially for younger audiences, it's a form of entertainment and you need to see it as blurring the boundaries with other forms of entertainment. So, if you love a particular NBA star, you're probably also going to want to watch them interact with Ninja on a Twitch stream of PUBG, for example, or Overwatch.

Zoe Scaman:
You're probably also going to want to see them potentially have a slightly jokey anthem that Bad Bunny might make for them, for example, or a soundtrack, or you might want to hear what's their playlist that they're listening to backstage or behind the changing rooms or something like that, or when are they going to do the next match collab, for example, to release new hoodies, what kind of fun content are they going to make on the side about their lives?

Zoe Scaman:
There's so much richness there to engage fans with, and they want to see different aspects of you. That's the whole point. And it makes it so much more exciting, and it also then means that the game or the sport that you're really into bleeds into different areas and it forms this big morphing massive entertainment that you tap in and tap out of on a regular basis, and that's the goal. We don't want it to be separate from everything else. You want it to be mixed in as much as possible.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Well, I think the peak now is if you can get someone to write a song about you, like Jack Harlow just came out with Tyler Herro.

Zoe Scaman:
Yes.

Brian Bosche:
Mo Bamba.

Skylar Smith:
Mo Bamba.

Brian Bosche:
That was Skylar's anthem college. I think they still play at Michigan games, but that's like the peak, but when you start setting up these initial ideas with the players, "Okay, here are your three interests that you've agreed to do." Because I'm sure they'll push back on some, like, "Ah, maybe not share that part of my life, or not." But what are some of the goals you message? Is it just visibility? Is it to get brand deals? What do you message to these players about why they should be building their brands this way?

Zoe Scaman:
It depends on where they're at in their career at this particular point in time. Ideally, you start right from the off. Before you've even made it into a national team or something like that. You start building your profile. And we're seeing that more and more. I'm sure you guys are familiar with 270 Hoops, and you know what they're doing for more college basketball, and they're starting to build the brands of college stars that haven't necessarily been drafted yet, which is a really smart thing to do, and also it means that those kids can springboard into their own brands and their own following. There's a couple of different ways to look at it. So, there are a number of different benefits. The first one is obviously the more of a persona that you can build alongside the fact that you must be decent at the game.

Zoe Scaman:
You can't be a shit player and build it. You got to be good at what you do. That means you're going to get the eye of brands, for example. So, if you've got a huge following on TikTok, and you've got a huge following on Instagram, and you can prove that you've got an engaged community that love your content, you are so much more worthwhile, commercially, and obviously creatively to a brand than just your athleticism on the court, for example, or on the pitch or whatever it is that you do, because what they're looking for is your star power, and they want to be able to associate, let's say it's an Adidas or a Nike. They want to be able to associate your performance as an athlete to the performance of their clothing, but they also want to reach an audience that you already command and engage with because that means sales.

Zoe Scaman:
So, if you can actually say, "I've got 2 million followers on TikTok, if you do a match line with me, the likelihood is you'll sell at least a million, so that's 50% of my followers will buy a hoodie. That's big business, and brands actually pay attention to that. So, you're more likely to get approached. You've got more bargaining power, you can ask a higher rate, so that's the kind of stuff that you're looking for. Then the other aspect of it is, outside of your endorsement deals, because obviously your endorsement deals lock you in. So, if you do a deal with Jordan, for example, you cannot have any competitive apparel of footwear, that's just not okay, but you can do other stuff.

Zoe Scaman:
So, you can do fragrance, for example, or you can do, I don't know, a line of underwear if you really wanted to, or something like that. You could appear at a video game. Whatever it is that you want to do, headphones, et cetera. You then start to have the ability to, not only put your face and your name on top of an existing brand that you do an endorsement with, you can build your own, and that's actually a really interesting place to get into. So, Logan Paul is awful in many, many ways-

Brian Bosche:
Yes.

Zoe Scaman:
... as a person, but-

Brian Bosche:
I'm wondering where this going dot, dot, dot.

Zoe Scaman:
But... Yeah. Dot, dot, dot, awful person. Don't endorse him in any way. He's a genius when it comes to cultivating community, building brands and then commercializing those brands with that community. So, at the moment, for example, he's got something called the Mavericks club, and the Mavericks Club is a membership program and it's $22 a month.

Zoe Scaman:
So, it's more than Netflix and it's more than Spotify combined, and yet you've got a serious amount of people paying for this and it's purely to access content that's paywalled, that he creates, then you've got a merch line, then you've got a tiered Patreon esque system, and he's built the whole thing himself, but his ability to cultivate that audience and then create a brand that he knows that he can sell back to them, that's an instant monetization model.

Zoe Scaman:
That's really smart. So, that's another thing to do. And then the final thing is, your career as an athlete has a shelf life. We all know this. So, by the time you get to your mid to late 30s, you're going to be on your way out, if not earlier, and so you've got to think about what do you want to build for yourself after you have finished your career as an athlete? So, once you're off the court, you're off the pitch. Some people go into coaching, some people go into industries that have nothing to do with the sport.

Zoe Scaman:
If you have managed to build a big enough community for yourself and a big enough brand for yourself during the course of your career, you can use that as a springboard to build new brands, new products, new services, you can start to become an investor in areas that potentially you've now got expertise in because you built those brands and products yourself when you were actually an athlete on the field.

Zoe Scaman:
So, it gives you so much more leeway to consider what the shelf life of your career will be because you've got the shelf life on the court as an athlete. Just because you stopped playing doesn't mean you're not an athlete anymore, it just means you're transitioning into a slightly different mode of athleticism and your name is going to mean something slightly different. So, Michael Jordan is still an athlete and a basketball player. That's how we see him. He doesn't play anymore, but that's the kind of brand that he's built for himself, and that legacy will live on.

Zoe Scaman:
That's the kind of thing that you're looking for. So, those three things are basically higher brand endorsement deals because you've got a community to sell to, the monetization opportunities of making your own products and services and your own brands, and then the shelf life and longevity of your own brand after you've actually finished playing so that you can keep going and you can keep building upon, essentially, the foundations that you need to build right now.

Brian Bosche:
We need to clip that and send it to every single basketball player in the UK. That was incredible.

Skylar Smith:
Hey, here's your guy, and just follow this.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, please do these three things, which is amazing, and that you especially see, like after the career is over, you see a lot of players are done by mid 20s, which is so early in your career, and one of my favorite examples of this as Richard Jefferson starting the podcast with Channing Frye while they were playing with LeBron on the Cavs and they did it, and they were very transparent on the podcast, which was even funnier, where they were like, "Yeah, we want to get into media because we're at the end of our career, so we started this podcast to show that we can do it." And now Richard Jefferson's on TV, and you just lay that foundation for after career, which is pretty amazing.

Zoe Scaman:
It's exactly that, and then that's what LeBron's doing with Springhill Entertainment, which is really smart, and obviously he's making investments and that kind of stuff. It's not necessarily his brand per se, because he's not front and center in the content that he's creating, but he is creating a media legacy for himself. So, he can build cultural narratives that are meaningful to him and he can push them out into the world through fictional content or documentary style content, that kind of stuff as well. That might not be right for every single player, but don't wait until the end of your career to start showing people what you're capable of and actually what you can build. Do it now, and start building those blocks and see it as some sort of, the way I visualize it, it's like a Lego construction. Every move that you make in terms of brand, community building, self-branding, all of that is adding up, and what you're doing then is, by the time you get to the end of your athletic career, that's not going to collapse like a house of cards. Your life's not going to disappear overnight if you build those foundations, then what you've got is the ability to build on top of them and do something different.

Skylar Smith:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Very smart of LeBron to win the NBA finals to promote Space Jam 2. So, just multi-faceted-

Zoe Scaman:
I mean...

Skylar Smith:
Very good move.

Brian Bosche:
... marketing approach. Very good move.

Zoe Scaman:
I know, right?

Brian Bosche:
Just for the movie promotion. Very good.

Zoe Scaman:
Of course, of course. It's absolute genius.

Skylar Smith:
I do want to learn more about the lasting power of brands though. You mentioned that the superstar NBA player you're going to be working with is one of the really young ones, and we're seeing that a lot right now, many of the superstars in the NBA right now are incredibly young, 20, 21, 22, and these guys definitely, they'll have to grow up quicker just because of their career and the pressure and stuff, but they're definitely still at ages where they're still figuring out who they are, and so do you think about branding for someone that age? Do you think about branding differently? And how can the really young superstar players establish brands that are authentic to them right now, but also can last their whole career and beyond?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Decades.

Skylar Smith:
With whatever they want to do after they're done playing?

Zoe Scaman:
Brands are not static things, brands are stories. They are basically the shortcut heuristics that we build in our minds. So, when you think of Nike, you think of cool, you think of performance, you think of cultural fire power, that kind of stuff. When you think of Coca Cola, you think of fun and happiness and all that stuff. That's what they've built over time, but the definitions of performance have changed. The definitions of cultural impact have changed. The definitions of happiness have changed, and those brands have evolved with the times, and that's exactly what I would say for athletes as well. So, if I'm building a brand for someone who's in their early 20s, for example, right now I'm building it around the multifaceted person that they are, but that doesn't mean that that has to stay.

Zoe Scaman:
So, when they get to mid to late 20s, maybe they want to get more overtly political. They might not feel comfortable with that now, but maybe they do once they feel that they're maturing a little bit and they're figuring out what their stance is. So, then you can add something to those facets and you can start to move in that direction. You can also retire a facet over time as well. So, for example, if you were to fall out of love with gaming, very much doubt that's ever going to happen. I think these people are lifelong gamers, but you can actually find new ways to interact and new ways to build these brands, and it's very similar for creators as well. If you think about some of the most incredible creators at the moment, so when I say creator, I mean people who are much more accessible and much more authentic creating content, so Ninja, David Dobrik. Again, Logan Paul, [inaudible 00:24:31].

Zoe Scaman:
Those kinds of things, they are evolving with the times as well. So, they're evolving onto new platforms. So, a lot of them were YouTubers initially, and then obviously TikTok came out of nowhere, and they're smart enough to realize that just because they're a YouTuber, that doesn't define who they are as a brand, so now they started looking at TikTok. Twitch came out, "Great. Let's learn how to actually hold an audience for five hours in a live stream." Patreon came out, "How do we start thinking about building different levels of content that we can monetize in different ways?" So, it's all about evolution. It's all about making sure that you always have that rough lens, but know that there is nothing fixed. That's the whole point of being an individual brand as an individual person. You are going to grow up, you're going to change, your interests are going to evolve and you need to be able to actually push that in different directions.

Zoe Scaman:
And I think a great example of that would be someone like a David Beckham. He obviously used to be a fantastic football player, and obviously now he's still known as a football player. I mean, look how much he has evolved. He used to have a highlights and a ring earring, and it wasn't cool at all, and now he's got a gin brand and he's working with Belstaff, which is like a super high-end leather jacket company and that kind of stuff. So, his brand has evolved as he has grown older and his interests have changed, and so too, have the interest of his fans, that's the other thing to remember, is if you're building a fan base, now that fan base is going to grow up with you.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
And that fan base is going to evolve with you. They're not always going to be kids. You're not always necessarily talking to someone who is going to be 15, 16 years old. So, they expect you to change because they're doing the same thing. They want you to evolve alongside them. So, I think there's nothing to be scared of on that front. I would just make sure that you're constantly reassessing.

Zoe Scaman:
So, maybe once a year, sit down and go, "Right. Is all of this working for me? Am I actually enjoying it? Am I still passionate about these areas? Is there something new that's popped into my life that maybe that could be a facet of my brand as well?" And just have that reassessment, and I think that sense of constant evolution, nuanced evolution, not crazy change, but I think that stuff is super important to think about.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah, just constantly reassessing, and yeah. I think just forming your brand with room to grow at the beginning and room to be yourself and grow. I do want to back up just a second. We were talking about all of the kind of ventures that athletes can go into outside of their sport.

Skylar Smith:
We mentioned sneaker deals, we mentioned clothing and merch, but we also see a lot of wine labels, for example, in the NBA right now. What can athletes do to ensure that their brands in these ventures outside of their sport, when there are so many athletes going into them, how can they ensure that their brand is unique and distinguishable from other athletes?

Zoe Scaman:
Do you mean if they're going into categories that wouldn't necessarily seem obvious?

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. I think just like we see so many athletes have sneaker deals and I think a lot of sneaker deals, in my brain... I lose details around them because I see so many sneaker deals, or like I'll see a lot of NBA players forming wine labels, and then all of a sudden, I can't remember which name goes with which NBA player, because so many players have wine labels. So, how do you make sure that you're not just getting lost in that mix?

Zoe Scaman:
There are a couple of different things there. So, for the players that are going into wine labels, for example, that isn't necessarily a personal brand extension, that's more of an investment. So, they will never be... Very, very rare, but they will never be creating a wine brand from scratch. What that will be is, that will be an existing wine brand or an existing wine company that have gone to them and said, "Do you mind if we brand our wine with your name or with your association to help us boost it in some capacity?"

Zoe Scaman:
So, that's more of a kind of, "I'm getting an equity share here because I'm allowing them to take my names." So, it's more of a licensing deal than a personal brand extension. Whereas actually, if you're thinking about like a sneaker deal or merch, that is a brand extension. It's still an endorsement because you're probably going to do it with like a Nike or Jordan or those kind of things, but there are ways to make it distinct.

Zoe Scaman:
So, if you put the wine label and the equity work to one side, because you're never really going to be able to have that much distinction around it, potentially maybe you could, but it's hard. If you're looking at something like sneakers, it's about actually thinking about what are you interested in? So, let's pretend that there's an NBA player who is super into solving climate change, and he's super into making sure that the world is a healthier place.

Zoe Scaman:
That could mean that he really hammers home the emphasis that every single sneaker deal that he does is made out of 100% sustainable materials, for example, and that's what stands out on that sense. It could be that there is an NBA star who everybody knows is like the biggest fan of Fortnite ever, and so he has Fortnite characters on his sneakers, for example, or it could be that you own a color.

Zoe Scaman:
So, is your color, for example, do you always wear purple and green or something like that? So, again, you've got those sneakers, but you can find little nuances and details to make sure that that deal, that partnership is uniquely yours and it's all around messaging, and it's all about actually how you go about it. So, it's less like... The Jordan brand, for example, is always going to be the Jordan brand.

Zoe Scaman:
Yes, they're going to do deals with loads of other NBA players, they're going to have their own shoes coming out, but it's always going to be the Jordan brand, but the way for you to put your stamp on that is to think about, "How would I want to do this? How am I going to represent myself through that sneaker and through that shoe?"

Skylar Smith:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Brian Bosche:
This is so much good information. It's like a fire hose of marketing and branding information. If we're talking-

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah. Sorry about that.

Brian Bosche:
No, no, this is incredible, but to start with, a lot of these athletes are young. Maybe they don't have the marketing and branding backgrounds, they just hoop. So, if you were to give advice to someone, 22 year old signs his first contract with the British Basketball League, so he's making a living, he's not making a ton of money, he doesn't have access to someone like you to help build out the brand. Where do they get started? What are some of the things that they can do just by themselves personally, that could help them to start this brand?

Zoe Scaman:
Content creation. So, you are going to struggle to get people to pay attention to you and become a fan of yours unless you're creating content about yourself or about your interests or about your game. So, for most people, making a really good number of TikToks, for example, or Instagram stories or something like that doesn't come naturally. It is a creative art form, it's hard. So, what I would do is if you've just signed your first contract, think about spending a little bit of that money.

Zoe Scaman:
It doesn't need to be a huge amount because you can find people who were still at university who would kill for this kind of experience. Find yourself a videographer, find yourself someone that can do cool social media content, that kind of stuff, and they will be desperate to build out their portfolio, and also, obviously you need to pay them. It should never be free. I'm not an advocate of free work.

Brian Bosche:
No, agreed.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah. Find yourself a videographer, find yourself a social content person and do some experiments and see what works and what doesn't, and pick a platform that you think is going to be more resonant with your audience initially. If you're going to be young, it's probably going to be Snapchat or TikTok or something like that, and just start chucking stuff out there and see what sticks, and it is essentially, as the saying goes, throw enough shit at the wall and see what sticks.

Zoe Scaman:
That's what you're aiming for, but think about making content that is true to you. So, do you have a signature move in the game, for example, in terms of your foot work? Film that and turn that into a dance routine or something and chuck it up on TikTok against a song that you quite like. Do you have a dog that you want to feature? Do you have a really close relationship with your mom and she's quite a charismatic person?

Zoe Scaman:
Maybe film some exchanges with your mom or something like that. Basketball advice from my grandma. Just really quirky, interesting stuff that your fans are probably going to want to gravitate towards and to spend time with, but also understanding your limitations. So, for example, I'm very well versed on TikTok and Snapchat and that kind of stuff. I probably couldn't make a TikTok to save my life. I wouldn't know how to do it.

Zoe Scaman:
So, I would hire someone such as a videographer and an editor who can do it way better than me, and that's what I would be looking for, is get a little team around you. They don't need to follow you 24/7. Maybe you have them for 2 or 3 hours a week and you just create bits and pieces and you chuck it out there and you see what works, but it is a very worthwhile small investment once you've signed your contract to think about really growing that and getting professional help.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, because you can, whether it's someone in the university or just someone early in their career, if it's a graphic designer producing social graphics, if it's even a video editor, everyone has a phone now that records better video than almost any camera we could in the last few decades. So, even if you're just recording yourself and sending it to the video editor, sending it to the graphic designer, you can get really good content out there, and I love what you say, what's authentic to you?

Brian Bosche:
If you're a gamer and you're on Twitch, go on Twitch, record that and send it to a video editor to package up the little moments for you, or go to a basketball court for two or three hours. You can get out so many videos. I make Skylar do this all the time where we'll put out-

Skylar Smith:
Literally all the time.

Brian Bosche:
... 10 TikTok in like a two hour film session.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
So yeah. This is the bane of Skylar's existence.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
Is we're just constantly filming TikToks and making her be in them, but you're right. You can get so much content and just experiment and see what works best and people forget, your phone is your production device all in one. Record, edit, send off, you can do everything from your phone, but you're right. It's the habit of, you're an athlete, you're used to training. You're not used to documenting and creating as much, but it's a great skill to take on.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah, and I think it's quite scary for a lot of athletes because they feel like they have to do this themselves, and they feel like sometimes, especially on TikTok, it's scary to try and build for, and especially if you're a professional and you're starting out in your athletic career, you have got to train as much as possible to be the best possible athlete that you can be. You cannot, excuse the pun, you cannot drop the ball. You need to be just as good an athlete as you are building your personal brand, and I think a lot of them just go, "Do you know what? I don't have time for it in terms of building my personal brand and creating content. I don't really know how to do it, so I'm just not going to do it."

Zoe Scaman:
And I think it's recognizing your strengths and also optimizing for your weaknesses, and that's why I've got an accountant, for example, because I'm not going to do my tax return because I'll probably get sued. So, you've got to hire people that know how to do this stuff and actually see it as an investment in a longer term, more positive outcome, and that's how it should be seen, and again, it doesn't need to be expensive. You do not need a big, weird creative director. You need a couple of kids with a camera who know what they're doing.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, and you're in a natural hype house with your team, which might not be the best comparison, but you see all these creators coming together and they feed off of each other's audiences. You're on a team with all these players. I watched Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee play tic-tac-toe on the bubble on IG Live. It does not have to be-

Zoe Scaman:
Exactly.

Brian Bosche:
... anything complex. I watched them play tic-tac-toe, Dwight Howard beat him. I was like, "Yeah, Dwight." That was like 30 minutes of my life. So, yeah. You can take advantage of your teammates.

Zoe Scaman:
It's massive. I mean, look at House of Highlights on Snapchat and how much

Brian Bosche:
Oh, yeah.

Skylar Smith:
Yep.

Zoe Scaman:
... that's grown recently. Look at Bleacher Report and the fact that all of the different spinoff brands that they've got. A lot of that content is average. Nothing really happens, but people bloody love it because it's 15 seconds or 30 seconds and I'm just scrolling through and it is really entertaining in that short time period, and that is all you need for someone to go, "Yeah, that's cool. I'll follow that person."

Zoe Scaman:
That's it. That's the start, and I think if you don't know where to start to find these kids or to find these people that can actually help with your content, go on to Instagram and put out a Story and just say, "I'm looking for someone to help me with my social media. Is anyone up for it?"

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
I mean, there are going to be a hell of a lot of people that'll go, "Ooh, hang on a second. Basketball, social media. I have to film stuff and make TikToks. That's the dream. Yes, please."

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Seriously.

Zoe Scaman:
It's not hard to do. Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
If any athletes are listening, contact me for that. Would be happy to.

Zoe Scaman:
There you go. Yeah. You could build an entire agency around it, but yeah. I think it's one of those things that you desperately need, and actually the project that I'm working on at the moment is exactly that. So, we're coming up with obviously the biggest strategy and the content ideas and where are we going to take it? But the number one thing that we need to get right is the infrastructure to be able to make it happen. So, we're going to have to have videographers creatives, that kind of stuff, quite literally following this athlete around and capturing content because he's not going to do it, so we need to find ways to do it for him.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. Zoe, all of this information has been so incredible. I hope everyone listening has been taking notes. I know I mentally have been. Let's wrap up with a couple of listener questions. We put it out to our Twitter universes that we were talking to you today and they had some questions for you. So, our first one comes from Steven Ferguson, who he's actually the acting chair and equality champion at Basketball Scotland, so vested interests in athlete branding.

Skylar Smith:
Do you have any advice for players moving on from the game about how they can transition from playing while retaining a meaningful identity and profile with fans as well as within the sport? I know we touched on this a little bit, but maybe specifically in that transition?

Zoe Scaman:
I think it's getting back to trying to build your brand as quickly as you can if you don't have much time left as an active player, and thinking about what associations would people make with you. So, if you've been in the game for a couple of years, for example, and you're on the verge of bailing out a bit, what are you known for at the moment on the court? What were you known for in terms of your type of player?

Zoe Scaman:
Are you an individual superstar? Are you a team player? You know, Are you known for, as I said, your foot work? Are you known for the fact that you always wear really weird socks? That kind of stuff as well, and just write that stuff down in bullet points and go, "All right, what are my things that I'm known for? Okay. Then how can I capitalize on the stuff that I'm known for at the moment?"

Zoe Scaman:
So, if I'm known for wearing really weird socks, why wouldn't I actually go after a sock brand and just drop them a couple of emails and say, "Look, I would love to do a partnership of some kind with you in this space." Or if you're known as being a team player, do you want to start creating TikToks all about how to get the best out of your team when you work together and you play together.

Zoe Scaman:
That kind of stuff as well. So, try and springboard off of your existing tenants of who you are as a person and what you're known for, and then see how you can transition that content, into partnerships, into products, that kind of stuff, but piggyback on what you've already got. Don't try and invent something from scratch.

Skylar Smith:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. That's great advice. We see that, shout out to Mike Tuck who plays for the Sheffield Sharks. Illustrious BBL career, and you're like, "Oh, is he on sky sports? Is he making that trend? Is he going to marketing?" And it's great to see players start to do that transition with their brand. Next question for you, Zoe, this is from The Triple Threat Coach @Trplthrtcoach with not a lot of vowels in the name, so check him out. Thank you for listening.

Brian Bosche:
Does she, and yourself, I guess us, believe that players can legitimately monetize their brands here in the UK? And if so, how? So, I think there's this prevailing thought that basketball is very small in culture in the UK, and there's not an opportunity for players to actually monetize because there's not a lot of interest. So, what are your thoughts on can players actually do this and how would they go about doing it?

Zoe Scaman:
I think they can, and I think it goes back to building that community and building that following. If you've got 10,000 people that follow you across various platforms, you've now got these new technical operations. You've got OnlyFans, you've got Patreon, you've got a bunch of other different platforms, and for the first time, this allows you to create a space that you own, where you can house those people and you need direct contact with those people. So, I would lean on those and then find different ways to monetize them. So, let's say you're a player in the UK in basketball, again, think about what you can offer. So, do you want to do filmed short videos? So like three minutes a pop, for example, that you only give to paying fans, which are tips and tricks on how to improve your basketball game. So, that's one way of monetizing what you've got.

Zoe Scaman:
Then you also got brand associations as well, then you've also got, again, if you've got 10,000 followers, do you want to create two or three hoodies, for example, that you can get made in China, get them designed up and maybe you can sell those from merch as well. There's so many different opportunities, but I think the key thing that the UK basketball scene is missing that the NBA has got right, is they've got that governing body who actually really gives a shit about leveling up the sport and leveling up the audience and leveling up the importance of foreign involvement and actually the power of people coming together within this sport, as opposed to individual fragmented players trying to build their own stuff.

Zoe Scaman:
So, if you've got a couple of different players, for example, in different teams and you're all looking to build your own personal brand in some way, try and think about, not just creating your own fandom, although that is important, but actually starting to work together to multiply your fandoms as well. So, as an example of going back to JuJu Smith-Schuster, when he is streaming on Twitch and he's streaming with Ninja and he's streaming with Travis Scott, he's not an idiot. He's doing that because it means that he has access to the fandom that'll be watching Travis Scott because they love Travis Scott and he's introducing himself as JuJu Smith-Schuster and going, "Hey, do you want to also be my fan?"

Zoe Scaman:
And he's doing the same with Ninja. So, if you think about a bunch of different players in the UK coming together, they can actually cross-pollinate their fandoms and multiply those and increase them at the same time. So, that almost doing a job of what the governing body should really be doing, but they're doing it in a way that they're all benefiting at the same time. So, it's not about like, "These are my fans, you can't touch them. I'm holding them close to my chest." It's all about, at the moment, especially in the UK, we have got to level up the sport. We've got to level up the audience, the fandom, the excitement, the attention. You do that by working together, not just working on your own, but you need to find a balance between the two.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right as well, and it's not just in the basketball community, but the Travis Scott, you've got music, football and Fortnite, E-sports with Ninja, and that can happen in the UK too. Find a Premier League player or someone that you can get that audience and find someone in the music scene-

Zoe Scaman:
Absolutely.

Brian Bosche:
Find someone that's in the music scene. So, find all those different influencers or different players to bring people into basketball. I think that's really good advice.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah, and I think it's about crossing over fandoms, as I said. So, just because you were a basketball player, as you said with the Premier League, doesn't mean that you can't try and sit down with a junior Premier League footballer and do a Twitch stream together, and then suddenly, again, you're cross-pollinating those platforms and you're bringing new people closer to your orbit and vice-versa, or you go, and if you really want to, I think slightly different, chess for example, is blowing up on Twitch at the moment. Everybody's fascinated with watching chess masters play.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, I've seen this.

Zoe Scaman:
So, do you do something really weird and quite funny where you try and play chess for the first time with a chess master on Twitch and you take the piss out of yourself and you do it in a self-deprecating manner, but again, you're introducing yourself to a new fandom. That's what you need to be looking for. Blur those boundaries and do the multiplier effect.

Brian Bosche:
Well, Skylar, the Spurs, Gareth Bale went viral for hitting a corner three on the pitch for the Spur. They played basketball during practices. We need to get some Spurs crossover if we do Spurs versus London Lions or some crossover there, I think that'd be a big hit.

Skylar Smith:
Spurs try basketball, Lions try football?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. DeAndre Liggins one-on-one versus Gareth Bale in basketball and football.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
I would pay to watch that.

Skylar Smith:
I would pay to watch things as well.

Zoe Scaman:
And people would, it and they love it, and just because you're a football player or a basketball player or an NFL player, doesn't mean that you're not a fan and actively interested in other sports as well, and what I've found from working with these athletes is they are just really competitive on everything.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Everything.

Zoe Scaman:
Absolutely everything, and that means that they want to play, they want to have a go and actually they're more likely to be really good at it as well. I mean also Michael Jordan baseball, weird, but he did it, so it can happen, and I think that's a really smart strategy to try and pick up other sports fans as you go.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Skylar Smith:
There's no better time to be doing it than right now, too, as we're all at home and are more online and are more available for this online interaction than everyone was before.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah, absolutely, and I think especially when you think about what some of the NBA players are playing NBA 2K to try and keep people interested. Th Formula 1 guys, for example, they actually started doing virtual Formula 1 racing, and I can't remember his name, but there was a young gay man that actually beat all of them, and was now looking at being recruited into Formula 1, because again, it's based on how quick your reaction times can be and how well you can-

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Zoe Scaman:
... drive, and he beat them, which is just insane, but that is incredible entertainment value, and that's the way we have to think about this. You are an athlete, yes, but mostly you're an entertainer and that's what you need to start thinking about in terms of actually how you position yourself.

Brian Bosche:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Skylar Smith:
Okay. Final question. We'll wrap up.

Brian Bosche:
It's a good one.

Skylar Smith:
This question comes from, I'm going to butcher this pronunciation, I think it's Gale Sorokin. I'm really sorry if I'm mispronouncing it. Beautiful name though. Some football players like Neymar and Pogba have built very strong personal brands. While it's often benefited their clubs commercially, it hasn't always translated onto the pitch.

Skylar Smith:
What's the best way for British basketball players to navigate and avoid this possible tension. I think this is like what you were talking about earlier with the really young superstars that were trying to balance, like they want to be training at all times, but then they also need to be putting time and effort towards their brand as well.

Zoe Scaman:
Yeah, and I think that is absolutely critical. You want headlines in all the right spaces, and you want headlines because you're cool, and you're awesome and you've got a great fandom, but you also want headlines because you are exceptional at the sport within which you're playing, and yeah. I think the likes of the Neymar's and that kind of stuff, I don't think anybody really wants to... I mean, yeah. From a money perspective, it'd be brilliant, wouldn't it?

Zoe Scaman:
But I don't think anyone really wants to be positioned as a sub-par athlete with an oversized brand, and I think that especially when you're younger, you need to make sure that you are top of your game and that's how you're building your brand first and foremost, and then obviously what you're doing from that is you've got such a following because you're so good that you can then translate that following into something you can then commercialize and turn into something bigger, but that's why I say, it feels overwhelming.

Zoe Scaman:
It feels like it's too much on top of your training schedule at the moment to create this content, that's why you hire help. That's why you get your videographers, that's why you get your junior creatives, your social media types, that stuff. Concentrate on your game and let them help you build your brand aspect as well, and just make sure you don't say yes to everything. I think that's quite overwhelming as well, especially when you're younger.

Zoe Scaman:
Someone says, "Do you want to do five Twitch streams this week?" It could feel like you have to, because that's a way to grow your brand, but just be smart and just make sure that you are still focusing on yourself and your ability to play, and play well alongside growing your brand, and actually you'll find that the two work hand-in-hand with one another. You just can't let your game drop.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah, I think that's great advice. Zoe, this has been so informational. Thank you so much for joining us.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. That was amazing.

Skylar Smith:
How about you tell the people where they can find you on social or if anyone wants to work with you, where can they find you?

Zoe Scaman:
I mean, you can find me on Twitter. That's probably where I am most of the time. I am probably overly prolific in terms of sharing stuff, so I read a lot and I share a lot, but yeah. if you want to find me, it's just @zoescaman on Twitter.

Skylar Smith:
Cool.

Brian Bosche:
Great. Thanks, Zoe, we appreciate it.

Zoe Scaman:
No problem. Thank you for having me.