The Norwich Guidon

The Norwich Guidon, student newspaper of Norwich University, is published twice monthly and has won numerous awards for excellence in its class.

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NU student's brother serves as NBA senior director of global media

By Alex Gleeson
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

As Lawrence Gleeson walks to work down Madison Avenue, he pushes his way through crowds of people gathered around Rockefeller Center and the live recording of the Today show and walks into a 46-floor building where the Manhattan office of the NBA (National Basketball Association) sits just across from the Time Warner building.

"There are about 600 people who work there, and our offices occupy six floors of the building," said Lawrence Gleeson, the senior director of global media programs, interactive marketing.

Lawrence has five people who work under him; each person has a specific task, which is essential for sales of the NBA web site to companies like Sprite, Yahoo, Nike, Reebok and other big names in the market.

One person is in charge of day-to-day contact between the big name companies, making sure they have what they need.

The second person is the traffic coordinator, which means she is in charge of all the advertising units, such as pop-up banners and ads on web sites which are also known as "impressions", which are sold by the thousand for around 25 dollars per thousand or CPM (cost per thousand).

"Buyers usually buy around 10 million impressions, which comes out to be 25,000 dollars" said Gleeson.

The third person on the team is the sales person; he is in charge of looking out for prospective advertising buyers.

The fourth person is an associate; she is a "jack of all trades" said Gleeson; she does a little of everything. "Researching projects and technology, virtually everything."

The fifth person is in charge of being the liaison between the NBA and the Internet web servers, making sure everything is running smoothly.

"I am the boss of these five people; my job is overseeing everything they do, and I put a final price tag on the whole package to sell to buyers." said Gleeson."I'm in charge of the web-based NBA property. There is also the print media and television media property that other people are in charge of."

There is also a very interesting part of the job where Gleeson gets to interact one on one with the actual players of the NBA at various functions, like parties, chalk talks where the partners (buyers) meet with the players, the NBA draft, as well as many games.

"Two weeks ago, I was at a thing called all-star weekend, where it was my job to introduce partners to players, players like Shaquille O'neal, Jamal Mashburn, Allen Iverson, Richard Jefferson, and Brian Scalabrine, to name a few," said Gleeson

"For me, this wasn't my dream job; basketball wasn't something I grew up loving, but what I did grow up doing was advertising and marketing. And the name NBA and how well that brand has grown and has been exported, we are the most global sport. Out of 300 players, more than 60 are international."

"The web site alone gets 40 percent of its traffic internationally, from Europe, China, Latin America, and that alone is really exiting" said Gleeson.

If you were browsing through the New York Times recently, you may have seen an article on sports related jobs. "Long hours and lousy pay, but a job, which is really exiting to be involved with."

Steven Greenhouse recently wrote about getting a job with the NBA when interviewing Dennis Robinson, the NBA's senior vice president for league and team operations.

"It's an intense group of people to work with and a lot of hard work; for a lot of people this would be their dream job, "said Gleeson.

People interested in sports related jobs really do not realize how grueling those jobs really are. Lawrence Gleeson enters work at nine in the morning and leaves around seven or eight at night. It's a high stress job which some consider a dream and an aspiration to attain, but for him just another busy day at work in the big town of New York.