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When Apple's Bozoma Saint John took the stage at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, grooving along to "Rapper's Delight" while demonstrating the new functions of Apple Music, the couple of thousand gathered at San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium strained their necks to take in the 6-foot-1 "badass," as Twitter declared when her name started trending. Within minutes,BuzzFeedblasted a post titled "Bozoma St. John Is the Coolest Person to Ever Go Onstage at an Apple Event," whileThe Vergeproclaimed "Apple's Bozoma Saint John Is My Hero." Both noted the significance of the first black woman to present at an Apple event.
That Saint John, 39, was chosen to represent the streaming service, undergoing days of script doctoring and intense run-throughs under the watchful eye of Apple CEO Tim Cook, is a testament to her influence on the $596 billion tech giant. She joined the company through Beats, which Apple acquired three months after she started working there in 2014. Says Jimmy Iovine, who hired her: "She's a force of nature. She walks it. She talks it. She knows what's going on, whether it's fashion, music, sports... That's what attracted me to her. I didn't need a technology person; I needed someone to sell a streaming service. And if she could sell me, she could sell anybody."
Photo: Billboard
Quickly upstreamed to head up music marketing efforts, Saint John was soon stewarding such buzzy campaigns as the ad featuringTaylor Swift's workout wipeout toDrakeandFuture's "Jumpman" (followed six months later with a commercial showing Drake pumping iron to Swift's "Bad Blood"), and another starringMary J. Blige, Kerry Washington and Taraji P. Henson and directed by Ava DuVernay, which premiered on Emmys night in 2015. In the latter, the ladies played themselves, trading music notes through which consumers could be introduced to the playlist concept. The clip became a social media sensation, prompting conversations about race and gender and helping drive subscribers to Apple Music -- 17 million of them, as last reported by the company in September.
(Billboard)
