FLOOD: The WORLDZ Edition by FLOOD Magazine

THE

EDITION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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AN INTRODUCTION TO WORLDZ 2018: CHASING TRUE NORTH MEMBRAIN FOUNDER KEN HERTZ: THE ALCHEMY OF ENTERTAINMENT, BUSINESS AND LAW CO-FOUNDER OF SUPERFLY RICH GOODSTONE: WHAT MAKES A FESTIVAL SUPERFLY VOLCOM CMO RYAN IMMEGART: HOW A CULTURE OF REBELLION BECAME A BRAND THAT THRIVES ON HARMONY 19 MAGIC LEAP CMO BRENDA FREEMAN: THE REAL WORLD OF THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE 24 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CMO JILL CRESS: PUTTING THE WORLD IN YOUR HANDS FLOOD Publishers Randy Bookasta, Alan Sartirana Editor-in-chief Nate Rogers Managing editor Anya Jaremko-Greenwold Art director Melissa Simonian Editorial assistant Mike LeSuer ANTHEMIC AGENCY Corey Anderson, Ana Dos Anjos, Michael Bauer, Joan Coraggio, Jessyca Estrada, Jacqueline Fonseca, Amber Howell, Mica Jenkins, Taylor Nuñez, Mai-Lan Pham, Kyle Rogers, Ricardo Rivas Velis

An Introduction to WORLDZ 2018:

Chasing

True

North

AS A WORLDZ TRAVELER, YOU DON’T NEED TO BE TOLD THAT PEOPLE ARE CONNECTING FASTER AND IN MORE INNOVATIVE WAYS THAN EVER BEFORE. In the last twenty years, technology has completely

changed the landscape of every industry, from fashion to music, finance to space exploration. In ways that continually surprise and thrill me, the industries that shape our culture are becoming increasingly interconnected, and companies are partnering in ways that benefit each other—as well as everyone else. Even ten years ago, you could survive in your own silo, but today you would implode. It’s the innovator’s dilemma: In order to innovate, you have to evolve outside your own industry. Since the PTTOW! was founded in 2009, my co-founders Terry Hardy and Jim Sullos and I have been working to facilitate and curate the top global masters and titans across seventy industries from all around the globe. We bring these leaders here to WORLDZ to unite with the rising stars of tomorrow—our travelers—and inspire our community to shape the world of tomorrow. Our dream is for travelers to meet their heroes, be inspired by them, learn from them—and to carry those experiences to create the companies and partnerships that will shape our future. When I was finding a path in my career journey, I found myself frustrated by events that were not aligned with my goals or my purpose. We created WORLDZ as a community with an emphasis on learning and inspiration—both professionally and personally. WORLDZ set sail in 2016 with Chapter One: The Maiden Voyage, a celebration of our new journey toward exploring the breadth and depth of the vast sea of ideas the world has to offer. Last year was Chapter Two: Losing Sight of Shore, as we acknowledged the joy in letting go of what you knew before, and pointing your personal telescope toward the horizon of unchartered waters. And this year, with Chapter Three: Chasing True North, we’re encouraging you to turn your focus inward, to calibrate what it is that draws you forward—to discover your true meaning and purpose. We desire for you to find the place where your deepest joy and your greatest talent intersect with what you think the world needs most. That is your true north. My ultimate goal is to create a platform where the world’s biggest visionaries and greatest minds are able to share their lessons with the rest of humanity. I want people to feel, having been part of our community, that they are limitless in what they can achieve.

Roman Tsunder

WORLDZ CEO and Cofounder

memBrain founder Ken Hertz is a multi-industry multi-threat, synthesizing disparate ideas into actionable strategies. BY ELAINE WAGNER

PHOTO COURTESY OF KEN HERTZ/MEMBRAIN

THE ALCHEMY OF ENTERTAINMENT, BUSINESS, AND LAW

the myriad business ideas rolling around in Ken Hertz’s head on any given day were to grow two legs and start milling about together, it probably wouldn’t look all that different from the WORDLZ summit itself. As an attorney, venture investor, and founder of entertainment marketing strategy consultancy memBrain, his days are spent gathering and analyzing ideas, facilitating the lateral and vertical relationships that will bring the good ones to fruition, engaging in creative brainstorming to elevate them, and tightening down the details that are the nuts and bolts of any business dealing. He knows that any successful business venture is based on the right market conditions, smart relationships—and luck. Can you explain a bit about how your knowledge as a lawyer and your experience and knowledge of the entertainment industry drive what you do? I have a background in both business and law; I studied marketing and went to law school. memBrain and my law firm try to focus our attention on the intersection of entertainment and media and advertising and venture in a way that I think is unusual. Our office in Century City is occupied by memBrain and our venture investments and our law firm, and there’s a lot of synergy that’s created in that context. You mentioned getting Alanis Morissette her first record deal. What’s the difference between you and an agent? Well, in the music industry in particular, lawyers have an unusual role. Oftentimes, believe it or not, lawyers are the first person that a young recording artist will hire, because lawyers are willing to work on a spec basis on the outside chance that that client might end up being a success. FLOOD

It seems like twenty years ago, multi-tentacled careers weren’t as much the norm. Musicians weren’t necessarily appearing in movies and TV shows, for instance, and they weren’t necessarily offered all these co-branding opportunities. The truth is, we live in an era of side hustles. The reason I do what I do is because I’m curious, not because it’s a good career path. memBrain is on retainer to a dozen global brands, Fortune 500 companies, and international leader brands. But we’re also advisors or consultants or passive investors in over a hundred startups in the media and technology space in particular, but also in almost every area. The thing is, we’re very proactive with our law-firm clients, corporate clients, and our venture and entrepreneur clients because we don’t see those boundaries as being useful in helping people succeed in this environment. If you want to succeed in any business, in my opinion, you have to get everything right—and then you have to get lucky. What I try to do is I try to help my clients have better timing. We collaborate with managers and we collaborate with agencies—talent agencies, advertising agencies, promotional agencies, marketing agencies—but what we really try to do is put all the pieces together and then sprinkle it with some kind of extra effort. What are the factors you consider when you’re deciding on an idea or a business to back? Is it an amazing team? Is it an extraordinary idea? Is it defendable? Is it a big enough market? Having success in a market that’s too small to make a living in is not success at all. And we have to analyze, “Is it a great idea that the world doesn’t need?” Just because something is a good idea doesn’t mean there’s an audience for it. Even if it is a big idea with a great team and a dependable opportunity, and the market’s big, then the question is, “Does it inspire us and does it inspire others?”

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Do you have a story of an idea that seemed wild, but you had a gut feeling that it would turn out to be brilliant? The best one is Alanis Morissette. She had been passed on by every single label. It was Guy Oseary, who had an office the size of a closet at the time, who practically climbed across his desk to sign her [to Maverick Management]. And he didn’t care whether anyone else was interested. My partner had come into my office and was just like, “Are we banging our heads against the wall? Is this record just not as good as we think it is?” And I said, “Let me make Guy listen to it.” And frankly that changed Guy’s life. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is another great example where nobody else in my office wanted to work on the account or on the project because the odds of a TV show being a hit are next to zero. And here we are, nearly thirty years later, and Will Smith is arguably still, on some level, the biggest star in the world. What are the tricky considerations in partnerships between brands and celebrities? The problem with making deals with celebrities is that celebrities are human. Brands have much longer life spans. Humans are flawed and humans are fallible and humans have private lives and we now live in a world of transparency. And just slapping a celebrity on a brand or just slapping a brand on a celebrity doesn’t always work. What you need is to create an emotional connection between a brand and the celebrity and that celebrity’s audience. When you get down to the challenging parts of your work—where there’s negotiations that aren’t fair or a client is having trouble upholding their end of an agreement—that’s probably where you prove that you’re great at what you do. That’s correct. And after thirty years of solving problems and getting clients out of tight purses, that’s my reputation. I’m the result of three decades of anecdotal research. People present themselves as being qualified when they’re not, but the only people that can betray you are people that you trust; there is this sort of American ethos, which is that if you’re getting away with it, you’re not doing anything wrong. But that disconnect is the gap that I’m trying to bridge in my professional life. And my clients all know that.

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WHAT MAKES A FESTIVAL SUPERFLY PHOTO BY ANDREW JORGENSEN

Well beyond Outside Lands and Bonnaroo, Rich Goodstone, co-founder of Superfly, knows how to scratch an audienceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cultural itch.

BY K.C. GRAVES FLOOD

f you’ve been to a Superfly event, you know it’s one of those things you’ll never forget. Bonnaroo and Outside Lands have become household names, but they’re not the only cultural landmarks that Superfly has sculpted into experiences leaving attendees feeling thrilled, and craving more.

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BONNAROO PHOTO BY NATHAN ZUCKER

Superfly co-founder Rich Goodstone tells us why he doesn’t think “music festival” is the right term to describe the kind of events his company puts together.

For people who might not know what Superfly does, can you give us a couple sentences of explanation? We’ve built the company to shape how people in the world play and connect through shared experiences. We enrich lives and build communities through these live experiences. We’ve done it a couple of different ways: One is through our own intellectual property, like Bonnaroo and Outside Lands. And then we’ve taken that expertise, which really amounts to a deeper understanding of culture and audiences, and we’ve helped brands more meaningfully connect to their audiences at that intersection of culture and commerce. The 2016 Google I/O conference looked more like a festival than a typical conference. Would you say that’s accurate?

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PHOTO BY TOM TOMKINSON

That was kind of a leap for them—a reimagination—which is what a lot of people think of us for. We think through a lot of experiential strategy and how things can come to life. I think [that conference] started off with this idea that we think of developers as the Renaissance men and women of today—how can that be celebrated? Immediately, your entire way of thinking shifts. We’re thinking about the environment, the experience beyond just the information that we want them to absorb. So it becomes the food, the feel, the night events, how the information that needs to be given is delivered and what environment it’s delivered within.

Regarding Outside Lands, how did you spawn a new music festival that became a fixture so rapidly? We wanted this to be a celebration of the local community: What makes the Bay Area special, and what does that mean to an audience who’s coming to see these events? Because we’ve always been brand-builders, our framework was looking at the entire experience, and while music for Outside Lands was the backdrop, the experiences outside of music—all the ancillary things—is what makes it special. I really think most people who attend a fair amount of festivals know when it’s a Superfly event. It’s a multifaceted experience; in this day and age, where there’s more and more things to do and there’s only a finite amount of attention, you need to continue to improve and disrupt yourself to get better at it. When Bonnaroo launched in 2002, smartphones didn’t exist and social media was in its infancy. How different was the publicity landscape then, and how has your approach evolved?

PHOTO BY AUSTIN SYLVEST

I think it’s very fluid if you’re paying attention. We’ve been successful by continuing to be curious, continuing to talk to our audience, staying aware, and not being afraid to get better and disrupt. Bonnaroo was lightning in a bottle, and the kind of success we had that quickly could never have been expected, then or now. We sold seventy thousand tickets in two weeks with one e-mail blast to the fan clubs of each of the artists that were playing. I look at e-mail now as social media in some respect. The messages that you send out, the way you disperse them, the way you try to engage your audiences—you have to be a student of the game, because if you’re not, things are moving way too fast for you.

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Tell us about some of the festival experiences you’ve had that inspired you. First was Glastonbury. It’s really the grandfather of them all, especially as relates to immersive experiences. I would just end up walking from stage to stage and never even get there because you’d encounter so many people and things along the way. That’s what it’s all about: the good friends, incredible experiences, moments that I’m going to remember for the rest of my life. [And then I went] to Burning Man. For me, it’s similar in its sense of community, its ability to not be about any one singular thing. From some of those qualities, we built the Bonnaroovian Code, which is kind of a code of conduct. You’re there to greet the world with a sense of curiosity. Half of it is the mindset when people come into our environments; we want them to be as open as possible within that framework. How do you keep the creative process moving forward when you’re brainstorming?

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PHOTO BY aLIVECOVERAGE

We have a lot of leaders here, especially on the creative front. Great processes are made to be flexible, and different people work differently, so we like to brainstorm, we like to play the “yes, and…” game, to build on ideas and welcome them into the ether so that nothing is shunned right off the bat.

What kind of motivator do you think you are? I always used to use the saying, “Treat everyone like you want to be treated.” Then there was a slight tweak to that, because that gets you 85 percent there; the holy grail is to treat everyone like they want to be treated. And there’s a unique distinction to that, because people want different things, and look for feedback in different ways. So I would say the first thing is trying to be empathetic, and trying to understand what a person needs. The goal is that you always want to allow people to succeed—so if they’re not, how can you help them to do so? How do you know when you’ve found a person that Superfly is going to click with?

ANDREW JORGENSEN

Hiring for culture has always been easy for us. We’re friendly, we consider ourselves good people; that energy of having a good time, of loving each other, thinking like a family—that’s always been really core to who we are. The nuance is assessing people’s ability to succeed within an environment—and if that was easy, then everyone would have the most amazing companies ever.

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HOW A C U LT U R E O F REBELLION BECAME A B R A N D T H AT HARMONY A strong sense of identity has helped Volcom CMO Ryan Immegart form relationships where everyone involved thinks they got the better end of the deal. BY ALISON AVES

PHOTO BY GARY COPELAND

THRIVES ON

For the CMO of a company whose image is tightly associated with countercultures, Ryan Immegart is awfully interested in building harmonious relationships.

But music industry–wise, the mid-’90s were a very long time ago. With the advent of streaming and social media platforms for self-promotion and music-sharing, the part labels play in artist development has been altered dramatically. “Now brands are looking to do other ways of collaborating,” Immegart says. FLOOD

PHOTO BY TOM CAREY

At this point, Volcom probably flows in Immegart’s veins. In 1992, he became the company’s first sponsored snowboarder at age fifteen. The sport—still six years shy of becoming an Olympic event—was evolving at a breakneck pace, and the industry and opportunities around it were beginning to flourish. It was a good time to get in. But after injuries hindered Immegart’s riding, he turned his attention to his other passion: playing guitar and singing in his band, The Line. That’s why it made perfect sense when he became instrumental in the 1995 founding of Volcom’s record label, Volcom Entertainment. In the post-millennial era of cross-market collaborations, this intersection of board sports, independent music, and apparel is a little less of a curiosity than it was in the mid-’90s. “It was pretty progressive at the time,” Immegart says. “We were trying to do something different.”

Immegart tends to describe Volcom’s collaborations with musicians—across both the label and the apparel segments of the business, though not every musician they work with is involved in both sides—more like symbiotic, mutually enjoyable relationships than business partnerships. “Probably 90 percent of the relationships we’ve had with musicians or artists that we’ve collaborated with have come from some kind of organic connection; we’ve never gone out to a talent agency and been like, ‘Hey, we wanna work with a hip-hop group, and we want them to have this many followers and live in this area,’” Immegart says. “It’s always been through a friend of a friend or some kind of meeting, and I think when it comes through those channels it always ends up feeling right.” Rapper Fat Tony recalls how when he first met with Volcom’s Global Director of Music and Art Kurt Midness, they instantly hit it off over shared passions: punk and rap, early ’90s alt-rock bands like Sonic Youth, and New York City. The first thing Tony did with the label was a 7" the following year. From there, the relationship has continued to blossom, with Tony performing at Volcom shows, DJing events for them, modeling their apparel, and producing content for their social media efforts.

PHOTO BY TRACKSTAR THE DJ

Likewise, a mutual friend connected Volcom with hip-hop duo Run the Jewels, and a love of skateboarding (both on the part of Killer Mike’s son and El-P himself) proved a common interest that started a dialogue. Volcom has designed an entire apparel aesthetic, and, specifically, an official RTJ jacket with a monogrammed pattern that has become the band’s signature.

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“The people that really resonate the most with Volcom are the people that are truly dedicated to some kind of creative output,” Immegart says. “It started in the form of board sports, and those people would be easy for us to talk to—they have an affinity to the brand. But then as we started drilling into what that was, it all kind of went back to just that idea of irrational pursuit of their passion, and how much they are dedicated to their craft and what they love to do. That’s when we went through kind of a rebranding from our mantra of ‘Youth Against Establishment’—we changed that to ‘#TruetoThis.’” “This,” Immegart explains, is unique to every person. “It’s completely broad, and there are so many different passions and people expressing themselves with that.” Whether it’s the music they play or the action sports they dedicate themselves to, the thing that unites both Volcom collaborators and its consumers is what Immegart calls “irrational passion.” “It could be a designer, it could be a musician, it could be an artist, it could be an athlete. Their attitude just needs to be that that’s the first thing they think about when they get up, it’s the last thing they think of before they go to bed—and everything in between is just noise.”

PHOTO BY RYAN BOYES

Grouplove vocalist Hannah Hooper designed a six-piece apparel collection that Volcom sold under the name Lady Grouplove. Hooper, whose background in fine art meant that the opportunity to scratch an aesthetic itch was a welcome one, took the lead in crafting the designs and even conceived a textile pattern that drove the look. “There was a casualness about making a capsule with them that I responded well to,” Hooper says. “They really wanted me to design things I would actually wear, and they wanted me to enjoy the process.”

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Immegart points out that individuals’ sense of identity tends to be more broad-minded and inclusive now than it was twenty-five years ago. “When I was growing up,” he explains, “it was very much like, if you were into punk rock, very rarely did you go outside of your genre. Now it’s the opposite. Why would you only limit yourself to one flavor, so to speak? The new generation is much more open-minded; they don’t have this preconceived notion that if you’re really into skateboarding and you live and die by that, you can only be influenced by or like certain things. Because of the Internet in general, you can educate yourself really quickly. So those walls have been completely broken down.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF VOLCOM

Immegart is at pains to make something abundantly clear: Volcom does not expect its collaborators to conform to some prescribed ideal; the company doesn’t demand alignment in terms of opinions or behavior, only common decency and values.

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Fat Tony relishes the company’s respect for who he is, as well as the fact that they like his willingness to take risks and be true to himself. “I come from a place where trial and error is what works best sometimes,” he says. “Much like how skaters are. You try a trick over and over again, you get some scrapes, you get some bumps, but the payoff is so sweet because of everything you put into it. I think Volcom does a really fine job of seeking out people that can represent that.”

IMAGES COURTESY OF VOLCOM

Immegart looks forward to WORLDZ as a place where some of those relationships are seeded—often in a context that’s more social than professional. “I really enjoy hearing other people’s stories,” he says. “I always get something great out of WORLDZ; I’ll sit in one of the workshops and be inspired—something will stick and I’ll apply it. The best thing I take away from it is one or two connections that continue throughout the year and may eventually—but not always—turn into a business relationship.”

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The

Real

World

the Digital Universe

Magic Leap One has been unveiled, and CMO Brenda Freeman is feeling the audience love. BY ELAINE WAGNER PHOTOS COURTESY OF MAGIC LEAP

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ince the early 2010s, a hum has been radiating from Southern Florida, news of a company pioneering the development of mixedreality technology— shorthanded as XR— operating in stealth mode and amassing recordbreaking figures in venture funding. This year that company, Magic Leap, has unveiled Magic Leap One: a set of goggles known as Lightwear, worn in tandem with a CD-sized Lightpack that clips onto your pocket with a handheld wand-like control. Together, they convince the wearer’s neural pathways that their computer-generated universe is layered in with the actual world—and they allow the wearer to interact with both. Brenda Freeman, CMO of Magic Leap, tells us how the company is looking to completely upend the way we use computers, and what partnerships are helping drive that mission. FLOOD

For the small percentage of people reading this who haven’t read up on Magic Leap, explain what the company is all about.

You said you’re building a new computing platform. Right now is it mostly for recreation?

We’re a technology company, but we’re also building an entire ecosystem. We’re hardware, we’re software, we’re content— and the partners who can build that content. And in terms of what Magic Leap One is, we are in this XR space—mixed reality. We are basically on a mission to build the next computing platform. The thing that makes our technology magical is the fact that you’re able to put digital objects into your physical space. So not only is it being able to experience 3D, but those digital objects actually interact with you and are aware of you.

There’s lots of different uses. I would say in the beginning, most of the partner announcements perhaps have been with partners or content that are in the gaming space—but we actually have quite an ecosystem that is creating in many sectors. There’s a lot of excitement around this, and especially with the secrecy leading up to it, there’s a certain amount of hype. How much do you feel like the hype machine helps you? I think most of my peers would agree that this idea of secrecy is a really interesting marketing lever. The fact that it’s generated intrigue and a bit of longing from an emotional perspective has been good. But that only works for so long. And now that we’re in this post-launch phase, we have very quickly pivoted with respect to overall marketing strategies to make sure we’ve got lots of proof points and that we’re actually able to deliver on some of that visionary talk.

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How do you market something that’s a secret? It certainly helps to have some pent-up demand, as well as early interest and intrigue. I don’t know if the [secrecy] was initially by design as much as just the nature of our founder [Rony Abovitz]. He’s very visionary. The first four years of our existence was very much in R&D mode. It was, “Can we validate actually making this technology work?” I came on board at a time when the company was pivoting from being much more inwardly focused to preparing ourselves for launch and having to be much more customer-focused and preparing go-to-market plans. The secrecy pivot was something that you had to create a new playbook for once you launch, and that’s what we did.

Now that people are seeing it, has there been any surprising feedback? We get such a kick out of the amount of brand love that we’re seeing in the social sphere—particularly with the indie developers and those in the creator community. Also, we’ve always put a lot of pride into making sure that the overall look of our Magic Leap One system felt artisanal, and it’s been nice to see some of those early [responses]. When they actually put the device on, everyone’s creating their own selfies, and showing how cool they are wearing the Lightwear. That has been a really nice, organic swell. It wasn’t something where we hired influencers or something like that to try to make our brand cool; it’s just naturally happening.

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I’ve read about the partnerships with Lucasfilm and Sigur Rós—are there others that you’re excited about? We’ve had an upswell [of support from] really strong companies. We’ve been fortunate in that we’ve worked with a lot of partners that are wanting to disrupt their respective categories, so in addition to Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm, we also have partnerships with Andy Serkis and The Imaginarium Studios; in other categories, we’re working with partners like Wayfair and the NBA. Each of these partners is coming to us at the top of their game and looking at how they can continue to be leaders in their respective categories. How do you operate as a creative thinker? At Magic Leap, even though we’re fairly large, we’re still a startup; everything, for the most part, is being done for the very first time. It creates a certain level of creative chaos. And those of us who are there thrive in that environment. I love diversity of thought, so I make sure there’s lots of folks who are part of my team that don’t look alike, that don’t think alike; groupthink is probably one of my biggest fears, so I want to make sure my team is made up of folks who are all rockstars in their respective areas. You give them the authority and the encouragement to bring their thoughts and ideas to the table. The challenge is how we focus the energy and the priorities in a particular way.

Are you the kind of leader who wants your team to give ’til it hurts? I’m like the mama-bear coach. I definitely exact pretty high standards. We drive, we go fast. But we enjoy the time because there’s a lot of laughter as we’re driving. I think it’s important that you make sure you give your folks the cover for them to really experiment and do things, and [know] it’s OK if we don’t necessarily do something right the first time; if there’s lessons learned, then it was an experiment that’s well worth the time. FLOOD

PUTTING THE WORLD IN YOUR HANDS National Geographic CMO Jill Cress says being a global citizen is more important now than ever. BY ALISON AVES PHOTOS COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

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hen you think of National Geographic, chances are the first thing that comes to mind is a vivid yellow rectangle, perhaps surrounding an arresting image: an elephant silhouetted against a torrid landscape, a woman fixing the camera with an intrepid stare. National Geographic has spent 130 years establishing and maintaining its place at the apex of serious journalism, propelled in no small part by consistently striking and informative photography. Moving that legacy forward into the new age of media while keeping its reputation intact might seem daunting, but thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exactly what CMO Jill Cress is doing. She went to work on the brandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strategy, updating and retooling whom they envision their target audience to be, and driving engagement to higher levels than ever before. In September, Forbes listed Cress among its fifty marketing chiefs who are redefining the role and shaping the future, and she was also named this year as one of Business Insiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s twentyfive most innovative CMOs.

How would you sum up the mission and market position of National Geographic now?

We’ve always leaned into what was next. One of the most bold examples of that was when National Geographic looked at Instagram and said, “Who better than us to optimize for a photo platform?” On Instagram we have the most followers of any photography magazine. I think it’s because we approach it from such an authentic place: We’ve got great photographers and we let them take our followers on an incredible journey. And we still believe in the power of visual storytelling to help people understand the world around them so they’ll care more deeply for it, so that they can figure out what their role in it is. Ultimately, we believe that it’s our job to keep the planet in balance.

PHOTO BY RANDY OLSON / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

One of the things that allows National Geographic to still create a signal through the noise is that it’s always been clear about its role in the world. While the medium and the way we tell stories evolved, it organized itself 130 years ago around a tribe of like-minded people that believed we had to understand the world around us so we could understand our role in it. I think that’s even more important today. The mission grew around understanding the elements of geography and wrapping that science and understanding in amazing storytelling. One of the pivotal moments for the company was when it leaned into photography. Alexander Graham Bell was the president of National Geographic, and he made a provocative decision in 1905 or 1906, which was to augment this storytelling journal that was rooted in science with photos. He set the course of National Geographic to embrace the power of visual storytelling.

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PHOTO BY JUSTIN HOFMAN / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

National Geographic seemed way ahead of the curve in terms of representing women and people of color. National Geographic has always invested in bold and serious people who would go out and understand culture and explore what was happening in the world. Our product, the magazine, brought people the world and everything in it. Before the Internet or Instagram you didn’t see those things so prominently. With the TV channel, we still believe in that mission and we augment our storytelling in a way that’s entertaining, so that we can have a 360-degree approach. We’ve organized the different departments of National Geographic— the magazine, the channel, the travel business, the product team— around the consumer we’re trying to engage. We decided our consumer is a very cool person—an aspiring explorer who believes that the more you can understand the world around you, the more you can grow as a person—that traveling and interacting with other cultures makes us a global citizen, and that being a global citizen really matters. They want to be well-read, and we believe our brand is bringing them utility around facts and information. This aspiring explorer is bold, but he or she also knows what they’re talking about; they have the knowledge and context.

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Tell me a little about the #PlanetOrPlastic campaign—what it grew from and what your aspirations for it are.

One of the big things they’re investing in is cleaning up the oceans, in an effort called Source to Sea Cleanup, where they’re looking at how to stop plastics from getting into the oceans. From a brand standpoint and from a for-profit media side,we’re looking at trends.Consumers are choosing brands that are taking a stand and making a difference in the world, so we’ve been evaluating the role of National Geographic as far as leaning into advocacy. Our audience not only expects it—they’re demanding it. We launched this multi-year campaign designed to drive awareness with consumers to engage them in the topic. Part of what we’re trying to do is advance our role with our audience, from reverence to really being relevant, as in, “National Geographic is a brand that matters to me today because they’re teaching me about what’s happening and how I can make a difference.”

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PHOTO BY JOHN CANCALOSI / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

We’re in this joint venture now. The media company [National Geographic Partners] is a for-profit, purpose-driven media company that was formed three years ago with 21st Century Fox. National Geographic Society is a nonprofit that invests massively in the science of keeping this planet in balance. They’re looking at big, bold, important initiatives, and we amplify those through the stories that we tell on the media side, with the ambition to give them 27 percent of our proceeds so they can continue to drive increased levels of education and awareness around these topics.

When you’re evaluating either a professional partnership or somebody that’s going to work on your team, how do you know when you’ve found a good match? I’m very energetic and I’m incredibly passionate. One thing I’ve learned is that if I surround myself with people who are too much like me, it doesn’t drive as much creativity. So I like people who have the same level of energy and passion, but come at it with a diversity of thinking. My leadership team is generally composed of people who come from different places in the world. I’ve traveled a ton and I’ve lived overseas, and I believe that diversity of perspective is huge for how I can lead a team and inspire the best thinking. What do you look forward to most about the WORLDZ summit? I have really encouraged my team to recognize this opportunity to connect and bounce ideas off so many people who are so bright and forward-thinking and innovative. I’m looking forward to having the time to have conversations that are not transactional. For me to connect with people and see my team in a creative environment is something that I know we all need to get unlocked and motivated. I’m encouraging them to leave moments for the magic of what happens when all those cool people are there—to be open to those random conversations that you don’t expect, that could create a moment of genius. FLOOD

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