I don’t think it was made clear but I got the impression that it’s sports marketing, perhaps online marketing?
Yes. They’ve been vague but it was an idea that Jim had with one of his friends when they were in college that they are finally bringing to fruition. It’s a new twist on sports marketing.
They mentioned something about the athletes being partners in the company.
Jim is making the same salary. This is specifically stated when he practiced his David Wallace call with the camera crew.
Her emphasis was “strenuous” because she was pushed into it by Jim’s condescension. And she did genuinely believe she knew how to do it. And she basically did know how to do it. She just didn’t know the call deactivated the video. A perfectly understandable mistake.
Jim is paid commission. If he works less, he gets paid less by definition. There is an episode in one of the early seasons where he talks about how he gets a huge amount of his commission from one particular customer and all he has to do is make one call. He messes up the call but has a nice moment with Pam so at the end of the episode he still calls it a “Good day”.
Isn’t commission in addition to salary?
And then she did absolutely nothing to fix it, she was surrounded by people with video and has been followed for years by people with cameras. She just completely blew off something that Jim had made perfectly clear was important to him.
Can I piggyback on this and ask why so many people are being flip about what Jim’s company does? There are thousands of marketing firms in the US, most of them tiny operations like Jim’s. Why is it so unbelievable?
Just because there are thousands of people doing it, does not mean that everyone understands it. I know that it is a bleeding edge paradigm-shift that leverages the synergy among generation “Y” core competencies, brand leveraging B2B best practices, and customer-centric, value-added knowledge process outsourcing; but not everyone else does. 
Here’sa wiki about sports marketingthat should help clarify the type of work Jim’s start-up does, though this info is pretty broad it will give you an idea of the basics.
Yeah, maybe ten years ago. Now it’s all about using viral advertising and social networking to crowd-source geospatial analysis for driving industry disruptive marketecture.
What is you? Ign’ant?
It’s true. I have no idea what the above means.
I enjoyed this episode. I have also seen employers bend over backwards sometimes for valued employees, giving them option or perks you would have thought utterly impossible. Jim’s situation is totally plausible to me, even if I don’t really understand what his new business does.
Not to mention her rudeness at taking a phone call in the middle of the recital.
Forgetting to turn your phone off is one thing, but you don’t have to answer the call. It was important, but not urgent and could have gone to voice mail.
Also, if you look at the scene where she tries to show Oscar and Kevin the video, you can see that the four seconds of video she shot are comically askew. It’s plain to see that the episode’s director was showing her total failure at this task.
Man, Pam has become annoying. Team Karen. If Jim had chosen Karen, they’d already be in Philly, and she’d be a key player in the start-up.
That Wiki article is just full of useless buzz words, but the jist of it is that a marketer tries to get people interested in your product/project. A “sports marketing” firm like Jim’s would likely work with athletes (see the Dr. J episode as well as Jim’s previous mention of Mike Schmidt) to promote their off-the-field activities. Say, a charity drive or the opening of a Dr. J-themed restaurant. They send out press releases, they arrange interviews, they run the social media aspect of it, they set up at local conventions/fairs and speak to people directly, they might even design a little advertising.
I guess since I deal with marketing people all the time I was able to grasp it easier than some, but man, some people think Jim just sits in an office all day and plays with his basketball hoop while yelling “sports marketing!”
I also recall when it was introduced in the show, Jim said something about ‘it’s sports marketing but you something-something directly with the athletes.’ It sounded to me like the idea was a company that cut out a middleman.
Sounds like something Ryan would be interested in getting involved in.
I read an article a few years back about people trying to start up an “athlete stock market” (that google tells me is kind of a real thing now) which is basically a glorified fantasy league with cash payouts. I personally like to think that this was something similar because of the fan aspect of it.
She’s at a much better show now, at least.
I didn’t have the impression that she thought it was particularly important to him. Not in a callous not caring what he cares about way, but rather, because heck I didn’t think it was that big a deal to him. I figured he’d think it was nice to watch, not that it was a serious couple fight waiting to happen.
Remember he was the one who, from her point of view, decided to work instead of going to the recital–signaling, again, that it wasn’t a priority for him.
And don’t forget he was an ass to her on the phone with his remarks about her phone capabilities. Right or wrong, he was a jerk about it.
This is not to say I think “Pam was right and Jim was wrong.” They both have forgiving and explaining to do. But you guys are being to hard on Pam.