Engagement Insider
Jaime Weston remembers being a young girl in her father’s Manhattan restaurant where the customers included then NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle; Jets quarterback Joe Namath and other sports celebrities.
Now some years later, Weston is back in New York City and just down the street from where she grew up, in the NFL offices, as the league’s vice president of brand and creative.
“Joe Namath was here one day and he remembered the restaurant and me and my sister running around as little girls,’’ Weston says with a laugh.
Weston was pretty sure she would work in some facet of the sports world, but she honed her skills in marketing in other areas before coming back.
It’s the same advice she gives young people today who have a dream of working in the sports world.
“I tell them all the time to choose your expertise,’’ she said. ‘If it’s sales, if it’s marketing, whatever it is don’t be afraid to hone that skill in a different industry. Then you can come back to sports. It’s not going to keep you out of the door. It’s going to be an addition.’’
And it’s exactly what Weston did.
After graduating from Georgia Tech where she played volleyball – one of the reasons she chose the Yellow Jackets was because her father knew basketball coach Bobby Crimmins – she began a marketing career in the magazine industry with Essence, Seventeen and Sports Illustrated. She later worked for Bloomingdale’s where she launched the company’s website and then for Susan Dell.
“I always wanted to work in sports,’’ she said. “I grew up around sports. My father played basketball at St. John’s. I played sports all the time as a kid. I was the boy my father never had. But my expertise was in marketing.
“When I was at Sports Illustrated, I had gotten my foot in the door, but I had two options. I could have stayed in sports at a low level and work the long road ahead, or gain experience in marketing and then try to get back into sports.’’
She chose the latter and when the NFL called in 2003 to offer her a job, she had made it full circle, back in sports and back in Manhattan.
“I found a home,’’ she says. “It’s hard to believe this will be my 11th season. But I love it here. Working in the NFL, you’re part of a family. It would be really tough now to go back and work for a toothpaste company, or something like that.’’
What Weston does for the league is market the NFL brand, while dealing with the league’s many corporate sponsors and broadcast partners.
“I lead the long-term vision for the league,’’ she said. “We are the premier sports and entertainment brand going right now. Not many places can connect people like the NFL does. People don’t sit around the dinner table as a family the way they once did. But they still get together around the NFL.’’
Those emotional ties that have seen fathers and sons, or fathers and daughters root for their team, whether in the same seats at the game their fathers once sat, or now in front of a big-screen television, it’s what the NFL brand does.
Weston uses three words to describe the NFL brand – Intense, Meaningful and Unifying.
“The intense is that passionate edge of your seat excitement that you get from the game,’’ she said. “Meaningful in that it’s more than a game, it’s an epic weekly drama that only happens once a week. The inches, the seconds that can change the course of a game. And then unifying in that we bond families, friends and even strangers who all come together on game days.’’