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How The Harvard Business Review Thinks About Content
00:45:50
On this episode, John Korpics, Executive Creative Director at Harvard Business Review, discusses his unique career path, the importance of visual storytelling in business publishing, and the role of AI in enhancing creative processes. He emphasizes the need for engaging content that resonates with diverse audiences and shares insights on navigating complex topics while maintaining brand identity. John also offers valuable advice for aspiring creative directors, highlighting the significance of collaboration and design thinking in achieving success.
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- [00:00]
Jeremy
I love your answer. Like, we gotta. We gotta be everywhere. We. We gotta be good at all of it.
- [00:04]
John Korpix
Yeah.
- [00:04]
Jeremy
You have all these different audiences that are certainly on all the platforms yet. That's a big. That's a big comment.
- [00:09]
John Korpix
Yeah. The one thing that we don't do is we don't flood the feed. Like, we're not interested in publishing a hundred stories a day that are kind of mediocre. Sometimes our website will publish three or four stories a day, and that's it. And our magazine has eight features that come out every two months. But, you know, those stories and those features are really worth publishing, and they will generate a ton of conversation. They'll give you a lot of ideas. Like, I've had friends who say, like, oh, you work for hbr, that's too expensive. And I'll be like, if. If I told you that for 20 bucks, I could give you an idea that would change the way you have meetings for the rest of the year. Isn't that worth 20 bucks?
- [00:48]
Jeremy
That's a great response. Hello, everyone. It's such a privilege to have some really interesting and amazing human beings that get to come into our studio. Let me tell you a little bit about John Korpix. John is the Vice President and Executive Creative Director at Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing. John oversees print, digital product content and brand design. And he's got a career that spanned over two decades. He has brought this creative vision to a very diverse array of projects we're talking about from dressing movie stars to designing charter school applications. I even saw. I'm thinking about an Uber bike connection. Uber bike Delivery on the LinkedIn. He has an incredibly unique background, and I would imagine that has shaped his approach to storytelling and problem solving across various media platforms. So at Harvard Business Review, John leads the creative strategy for one of the world's most respected business publications, Guiding the visual, the editorial direction in both print and digital. And I would say that his work is instrumental in making complex business concepts accessible and engaging to a much more global audience of executives and aspiring leaders and everyone in between. John, welcome to the show.
- [02:27]
John Korpix
Jeremy, thanks very much for having me. It's great to be here. I'm looking over my shoulder for the person you just described. I haven't seen him yet, but I appreciate that introduction. Thank you.
- [02:37]
Jeremy
I was mentioning to you in the prep before we pressed record that HBR has been. That's been such a valuable resource to me as someone who's worked across many different organizations and many teams. It just has become that. Go to it's at the top of my. It's bookmarked, you know, paid subscriber. It's the thing that I go to all the time. One for what's new, what's relevant, but also, like, what can actually help shape me in my career. So this one is super interesting to me, just as a user and a fan of the work. But I want to ask you, because there's something stuck out to me, which I mentioned in the prep, is your background. I mean, you have the wildest, most amazing background that I've seen, truly, of anyone that's come on the show. And so I know that has shaped your perspective. And I just want to understand how, like, how have these various things really positioned you to do the work you're doing now at HBR and hpb?
- [03:35]
John Korpix
Well, I would say I certainly didn't plan this career trajectory. It wasn't something I set out to do to begin with. But I think that there's an undercurrent there of me sort of just feeling anxious and needing to move on and learn more stuff. And so, you know, I have bounced around a lot. I worked. I started working at mostly, you know, consumer publications. Places like Entertainment Weekly and GQ and Premier magazine. And then, you know, kind of pivoted into digital product at Fortune and espn. And there were some bumps along the way. You know, when I was sort of not working consistently, I wound up being a bike messenger working at a charter school in Harlem. I think I've always been one of those people that just doesn't like to sit around doing nothing. So if I find myself idle, I will sort of force myself to figure out where I can be useful. The thing that all of that has done to shape my perspective is it just sort of humbles me. Like, I always know that you're sort of one step away from maybe having to find that next job, or one step away from maybe having to reinvent yourself. And also, all of that just kind of keeps things in perspective. So when I come into a job, I know what. I know what I'm trying to set out to do. I'm working for the audience. I'm working for my partners. I'm working for the people who are paying the subscribers the subscription fees. And that kind of is. My North Star is like, how can I be most useful? How can I apply my life experience to figure out the best way to tell these stories and the best way to position the brand?
- [05:10]
Jeremy
You said one of our favorite words in our media company, and that is storytelling. You know, I think it's a, it's fascinating, especially again, like the context of storytelling in where we're at now, short form content and diminishing attention spans are a real thing, right? And then you have, HBR is at this lot of long form articles. They still remain engaging and very relevant. How do you balance that in terms of storytelling? Because it's, it seems like the acceleration is happening so quickly. And so how do you kind of take a beat there, realize that there's a lot changing and how people consume content is changing and you've gotta be at the cutting edge or you'll be on the bleeding edge. How do you approach that?
- [05:53]
John Korpix
All of the different ways that people interact with stories are very platform dependent. So when I come into TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, there's an expectation that I'm there for 15 second reels or 30 second clips. But if I come in to a print product, if I come into a magazine, the expectation is I'm there because I want to actually sit back and relax and read something and enjoy it. So all I say is that we have to be, we have to be good at all of these different types of storytelling and that, you know, wherever we meet, wherever the audience wants to engage with us, we have to be really good at telling stories in that environment. So we have found that when you're on YouTube, there is actually an audience for longer form video. Like we have short form video on YouTube, but videos that are 7, 8, 10 minutes long actually resonate. People want deep dive content. They're not coming to TikTok for deep dive content, but they are coming to YouTube for it. They're not coming to Instagram for it, but they're going to our website and they're reading the longer form stories. So we just have to be able to do it all really well. We can't ignore any of it. You can't just, you can't come in and say, like, listen, you know, hbr, our brand doesn't translate to short form video. Let's just ignore that. We have to figure it out. But we also aren't going to stop doing the deeper dive things because our audience wants both.
- [07:10]
Jeremy
I love your answer. Like, we got it. We got to be everywhere. We got to be good at all of it, right? Because you have all these different, you have all these different audiences that are certainly on all the platforms and then you have different demographics and, you know, generations that are also engaging with this content in different ways. You've got people who have been like myself like, you know, HBR fans for many, many years, right? And now we're in this predominantly digital age and thought how I consume thought leadership content now is maybe a little bit different to how I did it back in college. So you've got to have this ability to sit at the table now with all of these really interesting, you know, channels, if you will, TikTok and IG and YouTube certainly, and LinkedIn and, you know, all these different mediums. And you just said very simply, we gotta be good at all of it, you know. So my question to you is like, how are you good? How do you get good at all of it? What's the approach there? How do you think about that? Because that makes sense that you would want to be good at all of it yet. That's a big comment.
- [08:11]
John Korpix
Yeah, you're right. It's sort of a cop out comment. It's like, yeah, we need to be good at everything. I think one of our biggest challenges is that we know our audience is at every level of career that you can conceive of. So we have people coming right out of B school who are trying to figure out how to write resumes and cover letters and we have people that are running Fortune 500 companies that, you know, are trying to figure out how to plan successions and, and reorganize their entire, you know, 5,000 team workforce. So we have to be able to get them content that at the core of it, it all has to be content that's meaningful. So there has to be research behind it. It has to be sort of user tested or at least, you know, tested out in the wild. They have to see that it's relevant. So, you know, you can do that at every level of the conversation. So if it's just someone talking about how to talk to your boss in a difficult moment, if we are talking about that through the lens of an expert or through the lens of people who have actually done this in real life. It's very different than just somebody who's writing an article giving you their opinion. So at every level of your career, we're trying to give you relevant content that, that actually has rigor to it, that has, you know, research based information that's going to be useful. So, um, you can do that in 30 seconds and you can do that in an 8,000 word story.
- [09:36]
Jeremy
How is it going on platforms like TikTok for HBR? Like, what are you, what are you seeing there? What are you noticing? And what's the, what's the strategy to stay, stay relevant There, there's clearly a.
- [09:46]
John Korpix
Desire for manage yourself content which is, you know, basically what do I need to do to progress in my career? What do I need to do to get a promotion, to get a raise? Like, how do I, how do I deal with a difficult situation at work? There's a lot that, that content truly resonates on TikTok. The author content really resonates. So we have a ton of authors in our, in our world that are great on camera that love to speak about their ideas. You know, when we can get that sort of parsed down to a 30 second clip or a 45 second clip, that really resonates. People love to hear from the authors. We experiment with it all the time. So we have editors on staff who are constantly thinking about ways that they can try and engage with our audience on TikTok. And then, you know, we just sort of track the data, see what resonates and keep trying more and more stuff. It's sort of like, it is a great platform for experimentation because, you know, you put something out there, if it doesn't work, no big deal, you're going to put something out the next day. And when you start to see sweet spots, when you start to see things that really resonate, then you can sort of focus your efforts in that way.
- [10:46]
Jeremy
You mentioned one, one, one experiment or one, one idea was having the author actually, you know, speak and say something on, on TikTok. Any other, any other specific experiments that, that you're either trying or have tried that are interesting in TikTok specifically?
- [11:01]
John Korpix
I do think that, you know, there, there are editors here who've been doing a lot of, you know, very personal content on TikTok. Just like, here's how I've solved problems. The, like, you know, if you've got an early career person talking to an expert, there's sort of a nice generational moment there where somebody who's in their mid-20s is talking to somebody who's in their mid-30s or 40 who's sort of giving advice and then saying like, here, try something like this. Here's what I've heard in the past, here's what we've seen work in the past. So that kind of content works really well.
- [11:30]
Jeremy
A big one that I know we spend a lot of time on in our business is LinkedIn. This one's super fascinating to me. I mean we have, you know, we have a network of shows, you know, that Mission produces and runs. And then each of the shows have a different host, right? Different perspectives, different guests that Come on these shows. And it's f. It's still fascinating to me about, like, what's working, what's not working there. But just how do you view LinkedIn, you know, as a channel, again, any, any kind of specifics you can share around what's working or what you're noticing about LinkedIn and how. How it's being leveraged.
- [12:03]
John Korpix
Sure, I believe. You might have to check me on this, but I believe we are the largest brand on LinkedIn. Like, we have some ridiculous number of followers, like 14 million followers or something like that.
- [12:15]
Jeremy
Wow.
- [12:16]
John Korpix
The thing that really resonates, the thing that we find that our audience really likes, is when they are included in the conversation. So we have. I think we have a LinkedIn reading group, we have a LinkedIn advisory panel that we will send new ideas out to get feedback from. We send them, obviously, we send them sort of invitations and alerts to closed webcasts and things like that that they can participate in. But mostly it's about making sure that the LinkedIn audience feels included in the conversation around the things that we're thinking about, the stories we're writing, the events that we're having, stuff like that. But that, that inclusion is pretty powerful. Like, it can actually really keep people engaged.
- [12:57]
Jeremy
I think you're actually right about that because our. Our. One of our producers was mentioning, he was doing some research prior as well and saw that it's. It's definitely the biggest audience he's seen. I don't know. I don't know of another one. And that's a testament to one, the type of content, but also the engagement. And that I also want to kind of circle that with you a little bit, is just the ways in which you're engaging with the audience and what you see, what you see working really well. You could Zoom out of LinkedIn if you want, or just kind of touch on different ones. But I guess the specific question is like, are there kind of new, interesting ways you are engaging with your audience in kind of modern 2024 that you weren't engaging with the audience before, or you kind of stick it to tried and true ways to engage what's working, what's not?
- [13:41]
John Korpix
I don't know that there's anything that's really kind of groundbreaking. I mean, we have a really robust newsletter following. We have great podcast network that generates a lot of interest. It's stuff that you've seen other brands doing. But I think, you know, we are really focused on making sure that when we do it, it is, you know, it's high quality, and we will take things that aren't resonating and we'll sunset them. Like, we'll just drop newsletters out, we'll drop a podcast out that if it's not resonating. We have two podcasts that have really stood the test of time. We have Idea Watch and Women at Work. They are really like, you know, tried and true audience that will come to every. Every new podcast, but they'll also come and watch the podcast get recorded. It's a really passionate fan base. It's like, I've. I've worked in media my whole life, and I've never experienced a readership and a fan base like this that is, you know, so loyal to the brand that they. They can't get enough content. Like, it really is kind of a remarkable story, especially coming from, you know, commercial media, brands that are reliant on newsstand sales and advertising. It's like our subscriber bases really are bread and butter. Like, they are just the most passionate group of readers that I've ever encountered.
- [14:55]
Jeremy
It's such a testament to the. The value of. I mean, the content. It's true. I mean, I. It's. It's been, again, I'm thinking. I mean, I first got turned onto this, you know, we're talking, you know, mid 2000s, probably like mid mid 2000, early 2000s, and started paying attention to a ton of content, Harvard content. And it's just like, it's consistently good. Like, it's just consistently good. And it's like, yeah, write great content, and you just continue to engage people. It's like, you haven't. You haven't dropped the ball over the years. And that's a testament.
- [15:27]
John Korpix
It's not by accident. I mean, the one thing that we don't do is we don't, like, flood the feed. Like, we're not interested in publishing 100 stories a day that are kind of mediocre. Sometimes our website will publish three or four stories a day, and that's it. And our magazine has eight features that come out every two months. But, you know, those stories and those features are really worth publishing, and they will generate a ton of conversation. They'll give you a lot of ideas. Like, I've had friends who say, like, oh, you work for HBR, it's too expensive. You know, it's like, it's. It's 20 bucks an issue or 120 bucks a year or something like that. And I'll be like, if I told you that, you know, for 20 bucks. I could give you an idea that would change the way you have meetings for the rest of the year. Isn't that worth 20 bucks?
- [16:12]
Jeremy
That's a great response. That's good, man. It's true, like, sometimes, John, it's like the. It's the title. Like, literally the title of the article or, like, the piece of content where I'm like, Even the title is like, wait a second. That. That could change the game right there. And then you read into that. You read into the content, and to your point, I mean, the power of a sentence, the. Of a paragraph that can literally change the trajectory of one's career, the way you connect with your peers, your leaders. I mean, it's. It's incredible.
- [16:43]
John Korpix
Yeah, it's. I mean, I have grown. I have adult daughters who are working, and I'm constantly sending them HBR articles. You know, hey, you know. You know, my daughter just sent me her resume the other day, and I was like, hey, read this article. You may. There's some really good ideas in here around things you might want to think about doing. So, I mean, every day I've got. So I go to HBR for something.
- [17:01]
Jeremy
So that's amazing. I'm assuming you get a free membership. You better get a free membership, John. We got to talk to some people.
- [17:08]
John Korpix
I get a free subscription. It's one of the perks of the job.
- [17:11]
Jeremy
Good, good, good. I want to click into, like, under the hood of, like, how John Korpix thinks, how John solves problems. So take us into. Take us into an experience. Like, take us into, like, you know, your process for, you know, you walk into your desk or you open something up, and, like, here's something new for you to look at. What is it like to. To be you and. And, like, what are. Give us. Give us an example of, like, you know, like, okay, this came across my desk. It was this thing. And give us some of your. Like, what's your approach and your creative process and, like, how you engage with this content or this creative. And just walk us through an example of maybe one of your most exciting ones or one you did, you know, on Tuesday, which was yesterday, and probably was also exciting.
- [17:57]
John Korpix
If you're in the shoes of John Corpus, the first thing you do is you ride your bike seven miles to the office, and then you, like, try and towel off in the bathroom.
- [18:04]
Jeremy
Wow.
- [18:05]
John Korpix
And then you sit down at your desk. Everything I do, there's sort of a philosophy behind it. So it's all different. Like, if you come to me for sort of what's our social media strategy? What's our. What's our product design strategy? There's always a reason for what I do. I think probably the most interesting is the. Is the print product. Because so much. There's so much conversation around, you know, why we do it, what is the value of it, you know, are people still reading magazines? How do you decide what to do with the magazine? So my approach to the magazine has always been it's a selection that people make when they subscribe, so you don't have to get it. You can just get the digital subscription if you want. And so we're already kind of being invited into people's lives by them making that choice. And so when I design it or when we design the magazine, I want to make it as enjoyable a read as possible, as easy to read as possible. Like, I don't want it to be overly designed. I don't want it to be confusing. I want it to. I want there to be a really consistent sort of look and feel to it. So we're not designing every story differently. We're kind of creating a very consistent flow through the whole thing. We're literally, like, placing things like pull quotes at the top of every page. We're not moving them around. So, like, as you start to scroll through, you know, you become conditioned to look for things in certain places. Like, I know where to look for, you know, the summary of the story. I know where to look for the pull quotes. I know where to look for, you know, whatever information it is you might be looking for. And then we have sort of this idea of aligning visual work with stories, with metaphors that kind of connect to the headline. So if you're doing a business publication, it's really hard to create new imagery around sort of traditional business ideas. So I always joke about this idea that if we see a flock of geese flying in a V formation for leadership, or if I see a mountaintop for leadership, or if I see a light bulb for ideas, we've somehow failed. And so when I first got here, we came up with this idea that we wouldn't actually assign too much art. We still do a lot of assigning, but not nearly as much as most magazines do. What we do instead is that we look for existing artwork that kind of aligns with the idea of the story. Right? You mentally make that connection when you see it, you see the art, you see the headline, and you say, oh, I get it now. I understand how this art relates. The other thing that does is that it kind of Elevates the brand to feeling like you're walking through a museum. So it gives it that premium experience. Ultimately, I want people who get the magazine to want to hang onto it. I don't want it to feel disposable. I want it to feel like something they want to keep on their shelf, you know, and collect. Even, like, you know, like you would collect old National Geographics or something. So there are lots of little things we do for that print product that we are hoping, kind of prop it up and make it feel like it's worth that extra few bucks that you're giving us, but also that it's a. It's sort of a badge. You know, you want to leave it out on your coffee table because you're proud to be associated with the brand and you want to go back and reference it. You want to, like, keep it on your shelf, because a year or two from now, you still may want to go back and look at it. So when we see the magazine. When I see the magazine and I talk to the magazine designers, that's the way we approach it. We think about everything as if we're doing it, you know, to create this really beautiful premium thing that is easy to read and that people want to hang on to.
- [21:33]
Jeremy
I know a lot of brands that, you know, we engage with have. I mean, I guess the easiest way is, like, they're. They can. They can be complex, right? Especially some of these, like, large enterprise B2B brands that are, you know, selling some, you know, software, some store or some service. Something I see HBR doing really well is there's this magic in turning, you know, complex business concepts into, as you just described, into visually engagement, engaging story, right? And so for the. For the folks out there that are tasked with doing this inside of their brands, you know, what are some of the elements that they should consider? Right. When they were thinking of, okay, make this, you know, stodgy, complex thing, you know, make it appealing, make it engaging. Right. What are some of the maybe. Yeah. Elements they could consider.
- [22:25]
John Korpix
It's a hard thing to sort of sum up in a podcast, but I would say that if you want to elevate the brand beyond picking up Getty Image photographs of people in a conference room smiling and talking over laptops, you have to be able to think about them less literally. At the core of whatever this. This thing is you're selling, there's an idea. There's a. There's, like. There's something about it that is the root of why you're doing it. And if you can get to that visually, that is a good start. I mean, you also have to think about the image you're showing and how does that represent the brand? It's hard to sort of give you like a couple of quick bullet points and say if you just do it like this, you'll, you'll be successful. But it is this idea that I, you know, when I do this, I'm sort of, you know, inherently connected to the brand on all levels. So every decision I make, you know, if I'm choosing a typeface or a font or if I'm choosing an image, or if I'm figuring out how to represent our brand in navigation, or, you know, if I'm doing long form storytelling in digital. I'm always thinking about, is this in line with what I think the brand is, which is, you know, a premium product that shows itself off in ways that feel like you're in a quality environment. I mean, it's hard to know exactly like how to do that. Unless I have a specific problem right in front of me. I will say I have over the years found that, you know, we will like, we'll do stories and we'll use old Harold Edgerton photographs because they're really cool. You know, stop motion images of water dripping in and showing water waves splashing out. And using an image like that for a story about how to sort of connect your disparate teams or how to communicate across a complex environment. Now you have this really beautiful, sort of scientific, historically based image that people look at and think is kind of cool. It's like, hey, that's a cool image, but you're also using it to kind of tell a story about your brand or your product or your idea. So when you can find that sweet spot of marrying those two things together, that's, that's when you succeed.
- [24:28]
Jeremy
Clearly, you know, you and the squad, the hbr, HPB squad there has to balance the need for, you know, depth and complexity with this demand for like quick, digestible content that's very fast paced. Right? So it's like you're, you're doing it, you're doing it well, obviously. Is there a particular example of maybe a particularly challenging story that you had to design? What made it difficult? How did you overcome those challenges?
- [24:58]
John Korpix
Yeah, so the HBR model is that we are publishing research, research written by academics, by business leaders, but we are essentially, it's a partnership. So they bring content to us. We kind of define it as worthy of publication and then we spend a lot of time polishing editing, getting it ready for prime time, so to speak. That's very different than a traditional magazine or news media model. And so we did a story once about Apple. I can't remember what the story was, but the authors worked at Apple. They actually were working there, and they were sort of writing a story about this new way they had come up with. I think it was about like an Apple academy, like sort of an internal school that they were sending employees to or something like that. And so what we did originally was I said, oh, that's cool. We can have fun with the Apple logo. Like, we'll play around with it visually. We'll do, you know, different Apples with different things happening to them, and I'll hire some artists and it'll be a cool thing to do. And so we did that. And then somebody realized that, you know, the people at Apple who wrote the story might not actually like it if we were messing around with their logo. And I had to kind of stop and consider that because, again, this is a partnership. In most of my career, I can kind of do what I want. Like, I'm the creative director and this is how I want to sort of take this story. I'm going to take it that direction. I had to kind of rethink that model here because, you know, it is very much about these. People have worked on these stories for sometimes years, and I have to be very respectful of that when we present these stories into the market. We've done stories sometimes where we are trying to inject a little humor into our website or into the pages of the magazine, but the authors take their story very seriously. And we're looking to kind of create a brand that has a. As a complex personality. So sometimes our brand is serious and sometimes it's aspirational and sometimes it's funny. Sometimes the authors don't like it when you're funny with their story because you're running pictures of cute cats doing silly things when really, you know, they've spent two years doing research and they're publishing a story. So I have to really be thoughtful about that. I have to think about, is this okay? Is this too far? Is this respectful to the idea that we're representing? So that took me a while to figure that part out after I started here.
- [27:25]
Jeremy
I can imagine. I mean, so, yeah, so many. I mean, you've got it. There's so, so many people to consider, right? You've got the audience, you've got the authors, you've got the partnerships, you've got the team. And You've got what you think. And so that ended up. That's a masterclass in and of itself. I wish we had more time for.
- [27:42]
John Korpix
You also have the business school, so. Because you have academics at the business school who also pay a lot of attention to what we're doing. So there is a lot of people with eyes on that are kind of wondering if you're doing the right thing.
- [27:55]
Jeremy
What'S the best filter for you? Because clearly you got a lot of competing opinions kind of coming at you, I'm sure, from all various levels of stakeholder. And folks, it's like, how do you take it in. In a way that's like, hey, that's actually interesting and thank you. Or, you know, actually have learned to just kind of let this bounce off because I've got to stick to my tried and true.
- [28:14]
John Korpix
I have to say, I have a really amazing editorial partnership here. So I work with Adi Ignatius, who's the editor in chief, and Amy Bernstein, who's the editor of the magazine, and Maureen Hoch, who's the editor of the. Of hbr.org the three of them have been here, you know, collectively a long time, and they're really good at kind of building a wall around the creative process because they've been doing it so long. They know how to kind of allow the creative process to happen, allow us to build the packages and the stories the way they're going to work best for the audience. And then we will talk internally. Sometimes we'll agree that we all agree something kind of missed the mark. But also, a lot of times they'll stand up and defend the ideas that we come up with in the art department. They'll be like, yeah, we can see how that might be a little tricky, but we love the idea, so let's all. Let's all kind of go to bat for it. So I think, you know, it has to be that kind of partnership. It's not like I'm doing this by myself or with just the design team. It only works well when you've got everybody kind of on the same page.
- [29:19]
Jeremy
That makes sense. And I. I imagine that the team that you get to work with is. It's got to be exceptional. There, there's no, there's no way that, that, that, you know, content and deliverable of that content is as good as it is if there's not an epic team, you know, supporting you and other folks there. So that's. That's clear. I am curious about the way that you measure your success. Right. The. The way that, like, how do you. What's the scoreboard for, like, the creative direction at hbr? Right? What are the performance indicators that, like, you. That you track those close closely in your role? Like, what do you. What kind of stuff are you looking at when you kind of look at a dashboard or look at some metrics? Like, what are the ones that key in of, like, okay, we're doing great, or, hey, I'm going to start maybe paying attention here to something else.
- [30:05]
John Korpix
Honestly, we'll do qualitative research, right? So we'll talk to users and we'll just kind of get their feedback on things. When. When I can hear back in qualitative research that they see what we're doing. Like, they'll say things like, you know, hey, I saw. You know, I saw. I saw how you updated the website and you kind of streamlined this flow. And I think, you know, it really helped make the process much more intuitive. Or the way you guys are aligning imagery with stories is really amazing. I really appreciate it. You know, just wanted to give you a shout out. So, like, we hear that stuff pretty regularly, you know, and it just kind of reaffirms that at least people get it. Like, they kind of see it and they get it. There's not a lot of, you know, measurable quantitative success metrics for creative. It's hard to. It's hard to sort of find those things. We could. You know, when I was at. When I was at espn, I remember I thought that it would be better to put a play button on video in the lower left so that you could have content in the center of the image visible. Because often for sports videos, for clips and things like that, the player's head is right in the middle of the. Of the thumbnail, and the play button was always over the head. So we had this, like, you know, really weird dynamic of you'd see a body, and then you'd see a play button on top of the body shoulders. And so I said, hey, why don't we move it to the lower left? We can put a caption on the thumbnail and it'll allow people to kind of see what they're about to click into. And they said, all right, let's test that. And so we tested it, and they found that there was, like, a 2% difference in when the play button was in the center versus lower left, and the center play button had a slightly bitter advantage. And I said, so what's the big deal? And they said, well, you know, we run about, you know, 40 million video clips a year. So each one of those has a pre roll on it and it's going to turn into, you know, $15 million in revenue. And I was like, oh, I get it now. Now I see why metrics matter. But it's a different environment. Like, HPR is not quite that sort of metric focused when it comes to creative. Like, I'm not measuring whether or not, you know, one image does better on clicks than another image. We're just mostly kind of relying on the fact that people want to read the story. But we are, you know, curious. Like, we want to see if there's a dip in something. We want to see have things dropped off for some reason. And maybe creative can play a role in that conversation. But mostly it's about, you know, resonating with users and readers and figuring out whether it actually represents the brand.
- [32:42]
Jeremy
Well, earlier you touched on this topic and I'd be remiss if we didn't at least cover it here in the last few moments. And that is, we're almost done. Isn't that crazy? I know, man. This always happens. This always happens.
- [32:57]
John Korpix
Yes.
- [32:59]
Jeremy
And I'm curious about kind of two pieces. One, you talked a little bit about this before, but we could certainly get into it again. Is just the utility of AI for you and your role, how you use it. How has this changed your approach to conceptualizing covers and stories for, you know, for hbr? Walk us through some of that. And then also you mentioned, you know, midjourney, Adobe Firefly, maybe some of the ideation and process around those as well.
- [33:26]
John Korpix
Right, I think I mentioned that most, most of the visuals we do are metaphors. So we're not running news images. Very rarely are we picking up, you know, images off a wire that show real people and real businesses and things like that. It's almost all metaphors.
- [33:42]
Jeremy
So real quick on that, on that one, because I know you mentioned metaphor a couple times. Like, where does that, where does that come from? Like, why the. Why the. Kind of, hey, we gotta look through what's the metaphor here? Like, where does that, where does that come from?
- [33:53]
John Korpix
Honestly, it's, it's because if you read the stories, they're all about ideas, they do use examples and they'll share research and data, but almost always the examples are, are of multiple touch points. So like, very rarely will we do a story that's like just about Starbucks or just about, you know, the succession at Disney or something like that. It's almost always like if your company is considering how to plan for CEO succession Here's five things you should think about. And so there's very little that we can actually tap into to pull an image that makes sense. And so we. We sort of have to come up with some sort of a way to represent the idea visually, and that. That usually turns into some sort of a metaphor solution. So it's funny because we get so used to doing metaphors that, you know, when we have a story that actually does have some sort of a visual that we could tap into, we sometimes miss it. And so recently we did a story about, you know, something about the way the Navy developed the F. The F15 fighter jet. And we did some sort of a metaphor with a paper airplane. And I said to the photo editor, I was like, hey, we can actually run a J. Go find a picture of the real jet. Let's run it. So, so anyway, so we use. We do a lot of metaphors. And I find that using software like midjourney is really helpful in ideation and sketching because in the past, you know, I would have to kind of decide who the artist I was going to use is first. Like, say, okay, I really want to use this artist. Let's focus on the artist as opposed to. Let's focus on the idea. I still love to use artists. I still assign a lot of artists. But at least this gives me a chance to say, let me figure out if there's an idea here that actually makes sense. And then I can talk to an artist, or I could sort of figure out if we can do it ourselves with collage or we can do it by picking up imagery. But I can sort of see things now, and I can share them with editors in a way that they can understand. So even in the past, you know, you get an idea, and it would be a pencil sketch, and the, you know, an artist would say, like, well, it's a pencil sketch, but I'm going to turn this pencil into a magic wand. And that's. It's going to look kind of like this, but, like, I can show that to an editor in mid journey. And they see it. It's like, oh, I get it. Like, and I say, I'll say, this is a representation. Like, it's not going to be exactly like this, but you can kind of see the. The magic that's happening here and how it might work. So we do that a lot. Like, we use. We use mid journey a lot just to kind of come up with ideas. And I know I am very respectful of the fact that I don't want this Necessarily to take work away from artists. But I see it as a tool that I can't ignore. I'm not necessarily using it in consumer facing products yet. Like I'm not taking mid journey imagery and sticking it into stories yet because I understand that there are a lot of legal issues around that. But we are using it a lot just to think, like just to think visually and come up with ideas. So I think it's, it's sort of, you can't really ignore it like this. The software is so powerful that it's, you know, to ignore it would be silly. But I do think you have to be respectful of how it's creating imagery. Is it being fair to artists? And you know, how can we kind of be respectful of that while still at the same time just sort of understanding what we can use it for?
- [37:22]
Jeremy
So John, earlier you talked about really how selective Harvard Business Review is in terms of the content you're putting out. You're not cranking out 75 articles a day across 100 platforms. That's not the play you're playing. So talk about the selective nature and also what makes good content. What actually makes good content.
- [37:44]
John Korpix
So there is a website that has the sort of criteria that we consider. When you submit articles, it is almost always research based. It almost always has to have been applied in real, in a real world scenario at some point, like you can't just say, I think this is a good idea. You have to have some data showing that you've tried it and that it actually has shown that it works. And then it tends to need to be from people who are kind of experts in the field. Like we want people who either teach this at a B school level or who have had success, who've written books about it, or people in the business world who've actually been employing it within their companies. So it is a pretty high bar.
- [38:21]
Jeremy
Okay, so I'm curious to kind of wrap here on. There's a lot of topics that Harvard Business Review covers. You talk about leadership and management, innovation and entrepreneurship, strategy, digital transformation, organizational culture, marketing, sales, finance, economics, et cetera. A lot of things around diversity and sustainability. And there's a lot of epic topics there. Which ones have been more popular these days or has it been consistent? Like, hey, look, you know, finance and economics has just been like hot over the past 10 years. So when we put that out, it goes hard, right? Or is there any surprising topics that are more interesting and getting more engagement?
- [39:02]
John Korpix
Without a doubt, Gen AI is the most popular topic right now. So we've done. I think we've probably done three or four covers in the last year and a half on Gen AI and just how it. How it can be used, you know, in a wide variety of ways. It seems to be insatiable. Like, people can't get enough of this topic. And we actually.
- [39:25]
Jeremy
Right.
- [39:25]
John Korpix
We will. We will test cover lines. Like, we'll send it out to the advisory council and say, like, here's three stories we're considering putting on the COVID Which ones are you most interested in? It's always Gen AI. Like, they're always like, give me more Gen AI content. So beyond that, there, like you said, there's a lot of tried and true stuff. It's a lot of. There's always interest in marketing. There's always interest in manage yourself. There's always interesting culture. Like, everybody's always interested in how do we create a better culture, how do we make the office a little bit more efficient and want to make people come back in and want to work together. Like, that kind of stuff is always evergreen.
- [39:58]
Jeremy
What's the most, like, is there like one article or like one piece that's like, been the most popular over the past several years?
- [40:07]
John Korpix
Yeah. Interestingly, right at the beginning of the pandemic, we did a story, I think it was by. Scott Baronado, is an editor who works here. I think he either wrote it or he edited it. I can't remember. But it was called that thing you're feeling, or that sensation you're feeling is grief. And it touched a nerve. It just blew up. And I think it was at a moment when everybody was kind of confused. People were locked in their apartments, nobody was going into the office anymore. People were trying to recreate culture over zoom calls, which was a disaster. And he just had this touchstone moment where it was like this thing that you're dealing with right now that you can't put a name on. It's actually you're feeling grief in the moment of what is going on with my world and by far one of the most popular articles we've ever written. And it's interesting because there are times when we really can kind of hit that sweet spot. You know, there's something going on culturally and we. We can address it through the lens of HBR in a way that no other brand can. And it really does connect. Like, we're next. Our next cover story is also about, you know, how people are still kind of feeling lonely at work. And, you know, I think that it's one of those things that when people See it, they're going to be like, oh, yeah, totally. Like, I. I know exactly what that is like. I do. I don't. I still don't feel as connected as I used to feel. And there is sort of a way that we do that story that nobody else does. So I really love that about hbr.
- [41:46]
Jeremy
I love it. I got it pulled up, too. So for everybody that was going to. I know you're going to inevitably Google it. It's that discomfort you're feeling is grief. Back in 2020, March of 2020. Scott Baronado. So I've got that one bookmarked. I love it. These pieces are timeless. Man is incredible.
- [42:01]
John Korpix
That's the other thing that, like, I was not used to working at a brand where when you post a story, like, people still reference it five years later, and it's kind of like, oh, yeah, we really, you know, these things, you know, they get recirculated in social media five years after they publish. So that. That is very unique.
- [42:17]
Jeremy
It's incredible. What else is incredible is you taking time to be on this in this conversation, John. Like, this is exceptional. Time evaporated during this conversation. I'm like, oh, it's so good. There's so many things that you touched on. And so I want to say thank you to you and the whole HBR HPB squad. And I just kind of. A final question is, you know, as you kind of look ahead, one. Actually, let's. Let's. Let's go with two. Two final questions. The first one is, what excites you most about the future of visual storytelling in business publishing?
- [42:54]
John Korpix
The thing that it strikes me most is that it is visual.
- [42:58]
Jeremy
Okay.
- [43:01]
John Korpix
There is a real hunger for stories that can be told visually, and I think there's a real place for them. People tend to think of visual storytelling as kind of lightweight. It's graphic novels or it's comics or it's something not meant for serious topics. But I completely disagree. I think when you look at the way people are communicating now, especially in short form, video, it's pretty remarkable how much they can express and get across in 30 seconds or less.
- [43:31]
Jeremy
So visual is not going anywhere is the name of the game. Last question. Thinking about the future, John Korpic's out there. What advice would you give aspiring creative directors or designers who are just beginning to explore the potential of the world that you're in? What would you share with them?
- [43:52]
John Korpix
I think that the way to be really successful in this world, at least in the job that I'm in, is to See yourself as a design thinker, a visual thinker who's part of a larger effort. It's not really just about how can I bring a lot of glory to myself, how can I show off my skill and my talent? It's how can I apply what I know and the way I think and the way I see the world to kind of help the rest of the people around me be better? So how can I help my editors tell their stories better? How can I help the marketers achieve their numbers better? I have a lot of skill sets. I have a lot of things at my disposal that I can use to help the company and my partners be better. I think that took me a long time to understand when I first got into this business. I was mostly how can I make myself, you know, famous? Or how can I make myself a star? I think, you know, it. It's not a bad thing to think that way. You definitely, you know, you have some highs, but I think you will have longevity and you will actually be able to build a career if you can start to sort of think about it as, as how do you play a, a part in a larger thing?
- [45:05]
Jeremy
Well said. Well said. Mic drop moment for sure. I think that's inval. I think, I think that's invaluable for any, anyone in any. On any career. In any career. That's, that's really important. That's an important distinction because I can certainly relate to going in, being like, okay, how can I just make myself known versus hey, what am I a part of? I'm a part of something bigger. So thank you, John. This was exceptional. Really enjoyed this conversation and I'm looking forward to when this one gets out of post production because this is going to be a mic dropper. So thank you sir.
- [45:33]
John Korpix
Thanks Jeremy. I had a great time. Let me know if you ever want to do a V2. I'm ready when you are.
- [45:50]
Jeremy
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