Vic Jacobi on building trust in NBA circles and the business of knowing everybody

0:10If you're a fan of professional basketball, as I am, many of the listeners of the podcast know that, you'll know that it's kind of a strange time to follow the league. Case in point, this offseason, NBA super agent Rich Paul turned his biggest client, LeBron James, his free agency decision into content for the podcast that Rich Paul himself co-hosts. Rich actually wheeled a literal whiteboard with all of the teams that LeBron was considering going to onto the set of his podcast and with a little pointer actually went through the teams and their pros and cons, kind of deciding on air with the audience which one maybe LeBron should go to.

0:50The GM for one of the teams, the Philadelphia 76ers, actually appeared on Rich Paul's podcast to make the case for why LeBron should go to the Sixers. It actually ended up working. He is now on the team. Boston Celtics fans and local media were glued to NBA Finals superstar Jalen Brown's Twitch stream, kind of trying to parse the signs of where he was going to get traded to based on who was appearing on the actual stream itself. What's obvious is this. The boundaries between the league, its players, its agents, and other personalities floating in between have totally collapsed. But few people embody this new hybrid media personality better than Victoria Jacoby.

1:34She is a NBA content creator. She goes by the handle CountOnVic, where she has hundreds of thousands of followers across her various platforms. She got her start, though, just as a fan tweeting at players like Kobe Bryant. She's parlayed her internet fame into this kind of interesting informal role as somewhat of a fixer for a lot of these major kind of stars and their families across the league. She'll help connect players with major brands. She'll help connect media with players. And she'll help young stars just kind of navigate the life of becoming essentially a celebrity. She was telling me an interesting story about how she was figuring out what clubs to go to in Ibiza with some NBA players and where they should stay, essentially.

2:16She's got connections all over the world, and she describes herself as kind of a dot connector for a lot of the people in the league. I sat down with Vic at CanLion to really discuss how she balances being a must follow on Twitter and Instagram, feeding kind of the beast of content creation with kind of gaining the trust of a lot of these private and incredibly famous NBA superstars. Ben's off, but he'll be back for next week's regular episode. We have to take a short break and then we'll hear my interview with fic right after this.

2:56Hi, I'm Joshua Spania, VP of Marketing at Google. And you might assume I have all the answers when it comes to marketing. The truth, I'm just as curious to learn, discover the answers to everything as everyone else. We are living through a total reset of our marketing industry. The old maps don't work, which means we get to chart a new path forward. It's dynamic, it's fast-paced, and honestly, there's never been a more exciting time to be in marketing. That is why we've started a new podcast, Frontier CMO. It's from Think with Google, and I promise it's not just a bunch of corporate waffle. I'm sitting down with people who really know what's going on.

3:40CMOs, creators, technologists, the lot. And we're having a proper, unfiltered chat about what's working and, quite frankly, what isn't. These are your notes from the Frontier. So do me a favor. Search for Frontier CMO wherever you get your podcasts or watch us and subscribe on YouTube.

4:06So, Vic, I came across your stuff because you've been taking these amazing photos of, you know, Jason Tatum and Devin Booker and people like that. And it seems to me like, you know, do some consulting, you do some visual stuff for people, but I'm still a little bit kind of confused. How do you explain what you do to people who don't know and just see you kind of courtside at various important NBA games? you know I feel like this question is the question right because it's always something like even when I do kind of these sit downs um it's always how do you define what you do and I don't think there's just this singular word obviously or one um job description if you will because I feel like there's a lot more people like me now where it's kind of understood but it wasn't six or seven years ago yeah to to you know what do you mean you do a little bit of media and then some vip concierge stuff for athletes also and all these different things and obviously i do fashion week and people see me there and usually i have clients whether it's new york or paris right so i've kind of done it all because i just love basketball so i was like how do i what is the one thing that I can do to get in, but there's not.

5:22Basketball is just universal. It's been a universal language for so long, you know, and it all started. And a lot of people know this about me, you know, I'm a big Kobe fan and I just wanted to meet Kobe Bryant. And now I'm here. I just don't know what's happening, you know, and I, and I, I was very lucky to, to have met him and he was incredible to me. Tell that story. You, you're in was Kobe Bryant followed you on Twitter. He was one of a few people who followed you how what yeah how did that happen so i think it was in high school still i'm pretty sure and it was i was at home i think it was the first day of passover everybody's home nobody was doing anything and kobe had made a twitter after his achilles injury because i think he was bored he just wanted to see what twitter was about and d 'antoni was the laker coach at the time and there were a few tweets there back and forth after like a few days after he followed me um he said he was going to follow 100 fans and that day i went to nike in new york and you know i've had maybe 50 bucks on me total for like the week you know how you would stretch that in high school you know the 20 bucks or whatever and there was a new collection that came out uh there was this whole thing count on kobe which is why count on big happened also So it was a whole Nike campaign.

6:41And I bought this Mamba shirt and I tweeted it at him and he followed me two minutes later. I did not expect an answer back, but I DMed him and I said, thank you so much for doing this for your fans. And he said he responds with, thanks for all the love. Love spelled L-U-V. And I was like, wow, that's amazing. Guys, I made it. I can retire and never do anything in life ever again. But yeah, I really just wanted to meet him and talk to him. And I feel like that's how I go about, you know, people just want to take a picture. yeah like those are great yeah a lot of pictures tell a lot of stories and and i enjoy that i enjoy storytelling through images um which is some of my work with franchise magazine early on and slam magazine and everything i've kind of done has been that but my personal interaction with him was what i that was the goal yeah right so that's what i wanted i wanted to just get a minute of mamba mentality.

7:35So you started, he follows, so he follows you. And then, you know, obviously this is kind of amazing. You kind of, that's like one of the first steps that you took towards, you know, becoming kind of a personality in the NBA media universe. You, you said you work, you did stuff with slam. Like, I think what our audience is probably most interested in is like, how do you go from, I am a teenager in New York with 50 bucks in my pocket, uh, buying a Mamba t-shirt too. I am like hanging out with Carl Anthony Towns, you know, after, you know, the Knicks win the championship, right? Like it's the hustle, man.

8:06So, you know, early on after the Kobe fall and all of that, there was a Dan Tony, like I said, a few tweets about the coach and that was on ESPN for like a weekend. Kobe talks to fan me, please not fan best friend. Yeah. He talks to friend. Yes. Um, you know, about Dan Tony and is he going to get fired? Is it going to be this, that all these ESPN people start following me. Some of my best friends now, Whether it was Rachel Nichols, Cassidy Hubbard, all these women, Carrie Champion, all the women that I've looked up to. And Carrie is a big Kobe Laker fan, too. So I just kind of got these follows.

8:41And a lot of these media entities were saying, you're saying things that we wish we could say, but we can't. I had no contract with anyone. I was 20 years old or whatever I was. And I was just kind of building that up and live tweeting a lot of games and being funny but informative at the same time. because I am a basketball nerd at the end of the day. I will watch, you know, Pelicans games. So for me, it was kind of, that was the starting point. And then I think a lot of people's attention just kind of, it was a wave of attention on like, who's this girl? Why does Kobe follow her? Da-da-da-da-da, all this stuff.

9:19And there were some producers that would put my tweets and let me know like, hey, from Turner, for example, or whatever. like Vic we were like your tweet we're gonna put it on so that kind of also started like a like a media wave of like we like how you go about certain things like especially live like quick with it right um which is why I still love Twitter because it's like the first thing that I'm still we're still on there me and Josh our producer are still we're still locked in on Twitter we never left see what I mean like x or whatever it's called it's always gonna be Twitter yeah it's Twitter Um, and it just kind of spiraled in that sense.

9:55And being in New York, I can't tell you how lucky I am to, to live in that city because all these little events that started happening that I started going to, right. And knowing all the people that I know in New York, whether it's a nightlife, like hospitality, music, sports, especially basketball in New York is just one entity. Yeah. so it went from me being in the gym with mellow and brickley every day hoodie mellow days i was like what this was 2016 17 yeah like brick would call me at 3 a.m and be like yo i got james harr and chris paul coming tomorrow we need photographers right so i would go get photographers like i have i have pictures so from those runs that people probably that's crazy i think people would that's for like the book or something yeah you know so basically like it starts out you're getting attention from twitter uh you know you made like your tweets are getting on espn or they're getting a part of like you know very like fox broadcast people are talking about it people start to pay attention to you so you know some people in new york uh and then they're like they they you know they need stuff like photography and you're like basically i've got you you're connecting people exactly and that's kind of how it starts it was the connection but also just like being in there and being someone that you know people could trust like one of the first people that trusted me was Carmelo Anthony was Melo because of that gym so if he needed me if him and Brick were like we don't know that person and everybody was we had people outside the windows looking in trying to see like people would pull up to that lifetime yeah um at Sky and my friend Mitch Moynihan shout out to Mitch he owns the building so I would kind of have like the in of what is happening where we can go where we can't go where people can you know yeah so just kind of managing that space as in my early 20s is very overwhelming but at the same time I was like whatever I got it yeah right like I was running around in that gym like a crazy person and yeah some days you have brawn pulling up some days you have 12 all-stars and guys are subbing in and you We got Melo yelling, you know, saying shit like Melo does and just talking shit all day.

12:05And it's great. But Brick was going through a lot because all of this was building. So he just needed somebody sometimes to just be there and be like, yo, go do that. Because Chris is trying to get all the content out before anyone else does. Right. So he would invite people from Bleacher Report and House of Highlights to take. But he had to be the first one because he's editing everything. And also in those runs, you don't, you want to make sure nobody, no player looks bad if it's a man's or a dunk or whatever, you know? So just learned a lot in there and met a lot of guys that just needed things.

12:41So I was like, yeah, I'm here. What do you need? What was it like, like the first time that you kind of pulled up to one of those, you know, one of those sessions and, you know, whether it was Bello or anybody else who was there, what was that? What was that feeling like? You know, it wasn't, it wasn't scary at all. it wasn't overwhelming to me it was more like i wanted to bring value not even just prove myself i just wanted to bring value yeah so you know whether it was me pulling up with slam merch or whatever just to give it to the guys j cole was in there and you're like you're the slam girl i was like that's me what do you need um so yeah i went from that to just having that in and you I would have people tweeting at me.

13:26The mellow trait stuff was going on. So what's going on? Nick's coach pulls up one day. Okay, Nick's coach is there. And then a lot of media entities started kind of relating to me more on a personal level. One of my best friends in this industry is Shams. I love him a lot. And we're friends. We were just talking about him on the last episode that we did. We're friends. So we talk about anything. I've been busy today. anything we're recording this on the day of the yannis and tentacupo tree if i call him right now he'll pick up like what's up i don't i can't talk um so you know so when when things like that happen big moments like everyone can kind of like i bet vic knows i'm like i don't even really that's not my trade yeah you know what i mean like i know things and i'm always here if an athlete feels like they can talk to me about something in a moment of uncertainty and i can relay that to a media member or ask something that you know without them even knowing why i'm asking yeah but the player needs some information that's kind of more what i do yeah um if i can help in that sense or if a player has a question they don't want to call shams or whoever directly and they're like, do you know?

14:39So sometimes those moments happen. Like almost like, you know, you've got some, you've got intel, like almost like a journalist a little bit, but like not like for public. It's not like, what are you hearing? Yeah, it's not my trait. Yeah. It's like, I know things that you wouldn't know. Yeah. It seems like your days are very different, obviously, but like, what's a day in the life of Vic look like? Walk us through what a typical day during the season might look like. I have a studio with four other partners who are incredible. I've, They're my best friends. And we're all kind of really good at what we do.

15:11We're creatives. We do branding and marketing. And we wanted to kind of have an umbrella for all of us to create. So we have a studio in the city. It's called Downtown, DWN, TWN. It's on 20th. So it's kind of close to everything in the city. And we all kind of work out of there. And I'm not in there every day by any means. But, you know, it's a space where we do photo shoots. I shot something for a brand with Miles McBride right before Eastern Conference Finals. He came in with the big hair. He's like, I'm getting my hair braided for the games. I was like, all right, can you come do this? And, you know, yeah, there's some players that have pulled up when they're in town.

15:56And it's a beautiful creative space. and we just create, you know, whether it's players or people adjacent, like Asia Irving, Kyrie's sister who has her own brand and needed to shoot something. It's just kind of a creative space that I open up for my friends and other brands that we work with. We had a really cool Converse shoot there a few weeks ago. So now I have my own kind of space to elevate what's next. So do you, I'm curious, you know, you mentioned before, it seems like one of the reasons that you were able to kind of, you know, become like a prominent media person slash, you know, kind of consultants to, you know, some of these folks and doing branding, the branding and marketing stuff that you're doing is that you have the trust of a lot of these, a lot of players.

16:48And, you know, particularly, I think that that's interesting because obviously the circles of professional athletes for the most part are very, very small. What have you done to, do you think that's important to kind of earn the trust of so many of these, you know, players that you've gotten to know over the last few years? You know, to your point, they usually have, you know, tight knit family and the best friend, the cousin, whoever. I always say, knowing the player is cool. You got to be cool with everybody around them. so the crew got the crew down yeah so for me it's like if if usually for example if when i did through the lines with trey young right trey is a good friend i love trey to death um trey has his people so it's his three homies that like handle things they grew up with him they know him they're my they're the ones i talk to yeah more than i talk to trey yeah you know what i mean so it's kind of like creating that family environment yeah you know when i did pre-draft with jaylen for example jaylen sucks yeah his mom just hit me up she's like hi we'll be in paris honey we'd love to see you you know i know the mamas yeah i know the best friend i know everybody and i just like bring again i bring value to everyone as much as i can and i'm just like giving warm person like i'm not ever trying to get anything out of them yeah almost to my detriment like mellow's like can you start getting paid?

18:22Well, that's actually what I'm, that's something that I'm kind of, well, now I do. But then he said that at the time to where like, I had to kind of recalibrate how I move a little bit. How do you kind of navigate the complexities of that? It's not easy. It's not easy, especially because for so long I did things out of love and to, don't get me wrong. Sometimes, you know, I'll say it on my, I can't believe I did that for that long and not ask for something back. But then all my friends are like, but that's why you are who you are. And that's why I think the longevity is what impresses me the most about myself more than anything, more than the cool stuff.

18:56She's with this and she's on the court and all these things. I think the fact that I've been here 10 years now and now, you know, I'm transitioning like into my 30s and I'm 30 now and all that. It's it's sometimes I think about it. I'm like, I still, you know, I'm a vet, but I feel like, you know, I it's it's interesting because. everybody is different and I love people and I love figuring out people and it's, you know, and I've had multiple situations to where that taught me also how to move because not everyone is going to be understanding of my value when I've been doing something for so long out of love and for free.

19:40And then, Hey, you actually need to take care of me. And all these guys obviously have a lot of money and they can, it's like, do you want to? Because I know you better than anyone else. I know what you need and I can make it happen in two seconds. So if you go to anybody else, an agency, for example, they'll charge you out the ass. They don't know you like I know you. They have 15 other people on the roster or more that they need to take care of. So all these people have their agents, they have their agencies, they have all these people that take care of things but there's always gaps to fill and their agents also sometimes will reach out to me right like for certain things like hey Vic how do we navigate how do we go about this a lot of times it's about fashion week right like in Paris who do we go to because that's a whole other world they don't care who you are they don't care that you play for the Lakers if you don't have a direct relationship with a brand for example like Marnie or Prada or whatnot they're not open to it.

20:40Or if you're not spending, if you don't have a spend there. So a lot of times it's really fun for me to sit there with, with a young guy and just who's into fashion and all this stuff and, and kind of explain how to build those relationships. Well, we have to take a short break, but we've got a lot more with Vic Jacoby right after this.

21:09This week on our branded segment from Think with Google, I talked to Google's VP of Marketing, Josh Spanier, about what marketing lessons we can learn from the World Cup. We're in the middle of the World Cup, maybe the biggest entertainment event in the world. Six billion people watching, 48 nations. How do marketers even begin to engage with an event of that scale? So this World Cup has been absolutely phenomenal. Just a wonderful reminder of humanity coming together, of teams, of communities, of fans, just enjoying each other. And it's been great. And I can tell you, every marketer in the whole world wants a piece of it.

21:46We all want to bottle this magic and infuse it into our marketing programs. And one medium-term effect is, I'm telling you now, UEFA rights, FIFA rights, soccer rights, and most sports rights are going to be more expensive going forward. because we're going to look back at this event and go, yes, we want to be part of whatever's coming next. So that's going to happen. As a marketing organization, Google Marketing, we've been heavily involved in the World Cup. And our real focus has been to be a companion to the matches, not just a commercial interruption. So all our assets, all our creativity, all our programs are really designed to give fans who are enjoying the games something extra.

22:24Search, queries, keywords that people are looking for, YouTube dance trends, Gemini soccer tips, all the things that would help them enhance and enjoy their experience of the games. That's the way we're really showing up. And it kind of speaks to authenticity and being part of the experience, not trying to be dictatorial, top-down, telling people just buy something now, but actually help them enjoy the overall game. What does this mean for marketers and how are they participating? There's been a load of really compelling marketing, but I want to tell you about something that we're doing inside of Google.

22:56Pele is the world's most famous soccer player. His best goal was in 1959, but no one's ever seen it because there were no television cameras in the stadium where he scored this goal. We just have eyewitness accounts of it. Google Marketing, Google Technologists, Google Engineers have been working with the Pele Foundation, Pele's own family, to capture all those descriptions of the goal, a couple of still photographs, and using Gemini and AI to recreate the goal for the first time. It's a really good example of how I think we can give back to the soccer community. The documentary of the making, the talk about the goal is really fascinating.

23:35And by the time you all hear this, it'll be out in the world. Great way to participate in the World Cup and World Cup topics without actually domineering it. Where should people go to find out more? You can subscribe to my podcast Frontier CMO on YouTube or on LinkedIn for our latest insights and learning about the World Cup and marketing overall.

24:15champion jordan clark thank you yeah yeah he just did uh he just did a a show in milan and um i think i'll see him in paris but yeah i he's he's always been the it guy for me because he it's who he is yeah you know i i don't think jordan will ever put anything on just to be like oh i got drip on you know what i mean like he's not it's actually who he is how he moves Yeah, the clothes don't wear him. That's the thing sometimes with certain players, especially at the kind of peak NBA fits era. Do you feel like we're kind of like past that a little bit? You know, like the peak league fits. I love league fits.

24:57Yeah, I like league fits too. I do things with league fits. I love league fits. It's not about league fits itself. It's more about like... It's the tunnel moment. Yeah. I get what you're saying. Yeah. I think, yes. Even Kuz was talking about this, which I think is very interesting because I met Kyle when he was a rookie on the Lakers and I had all these brands send him stuff. I wasn't styling him or anything, but I was just sending him stuff and he wanted more stuff. You know how it is. Now he's so different because now it's quality over quantity for him. And I've always been like that. Everything I have on, I invest in, whether it's Cardi or whatever, right?

25:32So for him, he's like, why am I spending all this money to wear something once for people to take a picture of me and talk about it for what? on social media for a second and then you know and then i can't wear it again if i wear it again uh i'm re-wearing shit and people have something to say about that too so everybody is different like russ for example will never wear anything twice he'll wear it and then he'll donate it westbrook yeah then also that's russ who has a lot more money than yeah like he's been like so long and a lot of max contracts yeah and and you know that's another thing by the way that i love russ for starting his own brand, Honor the Gift, is incredible.

26:11And I work very closely with them. I see to a lot of players as well. And the price point of it is also great. So yeah, for me, it's like seeing the transition, like you said, the transition from everybody wants to be seen, it fits, every game is different, to it's a little, it's not that it's died down. It's just, I don't think the hype is as fast moving. Going back to what we were talking about before, about, you know, you have good relationships with a lot of people in the league. Who are the kind of, are there people that, you know, and you don't have to name any names, but are there people or types of players or whatnot that you kind of stay away from?

26:56I don't like transactional people. I'm not transactional. I mean, you have to be to a certain point. You know, that's why I have an agent now. Yeah. You can do that for me. Yes, exactly. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't like people who don't really care about the work. They just care for the it moment. And then it's like, move, move on, move forward. Um, I like to build with people, like actual real relationships. Like there's players that I'll sit with like Jalen, for example, or Trey Murphy or, you know, my onions and like before the game and we'll just sit there and talk for an hour or CJ McCollum.

27:35Like we'll talk about wine. his yeah um he's a winery he's a vineyard right yeah yeah um yeah and you know he hosts like these wine dinners and i'm missing the one in new york now and he's it's like whatever go drink wine in italy wherever you are a lot of mba people here this week for sure right like i kuzma we're talking about kuzma he's he's here uh or he was here last year yeah kd was here draymond's here yeah yeah so yeah so you know i think i think for me that's that's the biggest thing like let's have a real relationship and friendship and there's a lot of people that I say hi to and I keep them moving if I were someone who was in your shoes I would kind of feel a little bit like you know you came in like 10 years ago you knew mellow and whatnot but like there are constantly new people moving into the league and players moving out of the league and I'm sure there's just like you know every year there's 50 to 100 or you know 50 new players or something like that do you feel like the pressure to keep getting to know like younger players keep developing relationships with younger players is that like hard you know i did yeah so i was like what happened now that mellow retired yeah you know this these people are out this who are i have come to learn that just being in the spaces i'm in if the groundwork is there and i just meet these younger guys like i was just in ibiza had three youngins there with me from the from the hawks yeah 20 20 23 and 24 and they just needed me i just wanted to go out they needed a bow i got a boat plug now we're cool yeah i don't know it happens they're like do we want to go to pasha do we want to go to dc 10 we went we went to high ibiza to see uh ibiza to see um black coffee and it was great and it's more like they see even you know the player that that was there and was paying for the section.

29:28He just kind of, the bottle lady came and, you know, I speak Spanish. So he was like, Vic, what do you think we should get? Give me the menu. I was like, yeah, I do this. Okay. So give me this, give me this, give me this. And he was like, okay, thank you. Thank you so much. I'm like, you're paying for it. You know, but it's kind of like having the, the older sister, you know, I'm here, I'm here to hold it down kind of vibe. And a lot of them just fuck with that. and it keeps going from there. What do you think your career kind of looks like in the next five years? Like, where are you at? I don't know what's happening next week.

30:01I don't know. No, I think, you know, and people have noticed this in the past couple years. I've done a lot more as me, as Vic, just Vic things. So a lot of times, like, even my agent will be like, is this a work, like, thing that you're doing for someone or is this a Vic thing? So just kind of categorizing things in that sense now to where, okay, I am also talent. And that took me a while to get used to because I work with talent. But I think from what I've heard and the feedback I've gotten is that I'm good at being talent because I know all the bullshit behind the scenes of what it takes to work with talent.

30:38So I'm not the talent that just pulls up and I'm just like, hi, I'm a princess. I can be that in my personal life. But for me, it's more of that, Like I know the other side of things. I do behind the scenes. I've done the production. I've done the handling shit. I've done the, oh, Kyrie can't make it last minute. We got to pivot type shit. You know what I'm saying? So for me, that's the fun part now to be able to do, to pull up and just do things and be myself and get paid for it and get more opportunities doing things like that. and I think I do get a lot of opportunities to host whether it's with Puma or all these brands because I have the personal relationships.

31:25You put certain stuff on your own, Instagram, that's how I know you, whether that is, and I think a lot of this stuff is pretty raw, personal, the reason why it feels different than some of the other stuff that's out there because you're kind of close. I still wouldn't know my personal life though. Yeah, no, no, for sure. But what I mean is of the players that you're kind of with, right? Like, you know, it looks like what you're doing, which is kind of hanging out. Yeah, you've seen Donna Mitchell singing on my story. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I'm curious, like, how do you think about the content that you put on your own page?