← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#819: Recurrent CEO Andrew Perlman on the role of traditional media companies when there are 1.1 billion active content creators
00:24:04
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A
The agile brand. Welcome to Season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast.
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This season we're going all in on
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Expert Mode, MarTech, AI and Customer Experience, talking with the people and platforms behind
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the brands you know and love.
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I'm Greg Kilstrom, your host and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of martech, AI and marketing ops. Hit subscribe or Follow to make sure you always get the latest episodes and leave us a rating so others can
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find us as well.
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A
And make sure you check out our sponsor Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world applications. For more information, go to teksystems.com now let's dive in. With over a billion creators projected to be active in the next decade is the traditional distinction between a brand, a publisher and and a creator in need of an updated definition. Agility requires not just reacting to new platforms, but fundamentally rethinking who creates your content and how you build an authentic community around it. It's about moving from a campaign mindset to an ecosystem mindset. Today we're going to talk about the seismic shift in the media landscape driven by the explosive growth of the creator economy. We're going to explore how the very definition of a creator is evolving from a short term influencer to to a long term brand builder and what opportunities and challenges this presents for established brands that are trying to earn and keep their audience's attention. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Andrew Perlman, Co founder and CEO at Recurrent. Andrew, welcome to the show.
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C
Thanks for having me on, Greg.
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A
Yeah, looking forward to diving in here. Before we do though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Recurrent?
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B
Sure.
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So I actually started my career in the in the music business, then ended up running the digital licensing division of a business called Classic Media, which is a roll up of family entertainment brands. It's now owned by DreamWorks. I spent about six years in a completely different segment which was doing patent licensing, and then at the end of 2018, I founded what ultimately would become Recurrent.
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B
Nice, nice.
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A
So yeah, let's, let's talk a little bit. So you know, Recurrent sits at a really interesting intersection of this conversation that I teed up in the intro, managing a portfolio of established trusted media brands. Could you share a bit about the company's core focus and who you ultimately serve with some of the iconic properties like Popular Science, dwell and outdoor life?
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C
100%. So the premise when we started the business was that we would focus on content verticals with great brands and loyal audiences and that we would focus on verticals that had a really high convergence between content and commerce. We largely because that gets you a number of things. It gets you the opportunity for endemic advertisers, it gets you the opportunity to create affiliate revenue streams, and it also gets you the opportunity to create licensing. Of course, none of this would happen without loyal audiences. The way that the business is structured today, we have very specific content verticals, some of which you touched on home, automotive, military and defense, and then outdoor and science.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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So I want to start with talking from, from the strategic standpoint, talking about this idea of, you know, influencers, media, brands. This, you know, you could say convergence in some ways and, and just changes in others. You know, that projection that I mentioned of 1.1 billion creators is a pretty staggering number. Beyond the sheer volume of that, though, you've noted how the, the definition of a creator is shifting from a short term influencer to a long term brand builder. What's the fundamental change that you're seeing and what does that mean for how large enterprises should think about their own content strategies and partnerships?
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C
Sure, I think, I think a lot of this all starts with the premise of how content consumption has shifted. And if I were to sum it up in a few short things that are driving our business today, one is video is eating the world. Consumer consumption has really shifted away from text based media and more and more to video. The second thing that coming out of COVID has been a key driver for our business is experiential components of the business. And for us, the thing that is the single biggest experiential brand event that recurrent owns is Military Influencer Conference, which has grown like crazy over the past couple years. But we also have created experiences inside automotive and inside our automotive vertical with Donut, which ran about eight events last year, ranging from car shows to events at racetracks, and even with Dwell, where we ran a home tour event highlighting homes that had actually been featured in the magazine and then having engaging conversation with the editorial team. So to pivot back to what you're talking about in terms of the convergence between the creator economy and the traditional economy, we've been borrowing a lot of the things that we've seen that have been working inside the creator economy, namely video, how that creates a personal relationship with the audience, how you can use that to drive people to events, how you can use that to create amazing product lines and great things for consumers to buy. Beyond what used to be a relatively simple Experience, which was I read a product review article, I click on a link, I get sent to Amazon. Right now we're in a much richer environment.
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B
Nice. Nice. Yeah.
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And so, you know, with all the creators out there as well as all the existing media properties out there, there's, you know, as, as we all know, there's a lot of content being created.
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B
Right.
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A
It's in some ways feeling saturated. Your model of focusing on acquiring and growing established trusted media properties though is, is interesting in the context of, you know, again, all these short term influencers and creators popping up. How do you leverage that built in authority to cut through all that noise and you know, what's, what's the key lesson that maybe a CPG or a B2B brand can take from your approach to building an authentic, engaged community?
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C
Yeah. So I think to double back to one thing that was part of the commentary that you were giving. There is so much more content being created than there ever was. And to draw an analogy to, to draw two analogies from the business where I started my career, which is the music business, there are a lot of similarities with what's going on in Publishing today. 25 years ago, when I graduated college and started at Sony Music, we were making money off CDs. Then streaming became a thing and it became easier for artists to publish. The record labels had to figure out how to compete. All of a sudden they took them almost two decades, but with streaming they ultimately morphed into 360 businesses. So the first thing I would say is we think about our business as a360 business, not as a simple website business, which was what the world looked like when we started out in 2018. So in seven years we've seen a seismic shift. The second thing going to your point about brand authority, brands matter. And I think actually in the age of AI, we're actually going to see brands and trust matter more and more as more content gets created. So, so existing under a halo brand, like a Donut, like a popular science, like a task and purpose, creates real value and gets eyeballs. The related point that you're making, which nobody should ever lose sight of, which is the content always needs to be authentic to the brand. In video, even more than text, people feel when it's not authentic. People feel when the person that's a host in a video is passionate and excited about the subject matter that they're, that they're covering. And one of the best examples inside of our own business at Donut, one of the hosts on Donut is A guy named Jimmy Hilton. He, more than anything in this world, is passionate about the Japanese domestic market car scene. The team from Donut went to Japan, shot three videos. One of them was riding shotgun with one of the most notorious street racing gangs in the world around a loop in Osaka, Japan. That was one of the most successful videos that we've ever seen across our business. I think it's up to about 12 million views. And so, again, that passion and authenticity is the thing that shines through above anything else. And that really, to me, is what's working in the video environment.
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Yeah, well, and speaking of video, there, as you mentioned, it's clearly a dominant form of content, but there's also lots of types of video as well.
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Right.
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So, you know, short form, long form, live format. As a company that does a little, or you could say a lot of each, how do you decide which video formats are the right fit for audiences? You've got Outdoor Life, you've got Futurism, you've got all of the other brands that you mentioned as well. Is there a maybe universal principle that you apply when deciding what to do?
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Where?
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My universal principle is get a great editorial and creative team and just trust them. It's as simple as that. And pulling out the success of two of our brands, Outdoor Life, which has made an increasing push into YouTube, and the drive, which actually started out as one of the first automotive channels on YouTube, and we brought the channel back to life about two years ago. In both of those cases, it was actually the team that had been writing editorial content at those brands, and they got in front of the camera and were just incredibly passionate. Some of the things that have worked, quite frankly, have even surprised me, but they were things that the editorial team felt in their gut. Another great example inside the Drive was explainer content. So a lot of what the Drive has done, instead of screeching tires and Ferraris drifting around a track, now is explaining technology and things that occur in everyday life. So some of the videos that have really resonated with the audience inside the Drive have been one video which reached over 7 million views, where Kyle, who's the editor in chief of the Drive, went back and looked at, literally, a graffiti artist in LA who was so frustrated with the street signs in la, he decided to take matters into his own hands and repaint the signs for the 101 to 110 interchange in downtown LA. That video went crazy. He also did an amazing video about how. How street lights are actually resonating purple light. And the audience just loved it, so it's automotive related content that's explaining things that people are seeing or experiencing in everyday life and that's what's resonated. And again, I think that's an, that's an example of what we do, I hope. Well, as a company, which is to truly trust the creatives and the editorial teams to do the things that they love, that they're passionate about and that they think will resonate with audiences.
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Well, and that seems like another recurring theme as well is, you know, technically you can go to ChatGPT or Google or whatever and generate a video about a thing.
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Right.
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But the passion, the interest, it's clear when that shows through. And I think to, to your earlier point, I think we get that, you know, we, we can go to the boring explainer video that's a bunch of slides that was AI generated, but we tend to go for the one where the person explaining it really cares about it and has done it right and maybe done it wrong before, but knows. Knows what, you know, what, what's right and wrong, I guess in it. Is that, is that what you're seeing as well?
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Yeah, we're 100% seeing that. And I would actually even go a step further. You know, we like many companies, use AI to test things that should resonate with, with SEO.
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Yeah.
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And even in the text based world we do headline testing.
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Right.
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That's a, that's a normal thing. I would think every, every publisher does. But if I look at the articles that have been true standout successes over the course of the past 12 months, the ones that were true hits were when the editorial team completely ignored what the real suggestions should be. And that's how it happened over and over and over again. That's something that the team at Futurism, they look at all the data, they write great articles, but the things that resonate are the things that are truly human where they ignore all the rules.
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A
you know, another benefit of having several brands under, under the same umbrella is the ability to share content or you know, build kind of this connected media ecosystem. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what, what kind of opportunities are there and how has it worked successfully?
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C
Yeah, so we do our best. You know, I think it's, it's harder in a virtual world than it is in an office world and we are a company that, that was built during COVID So we are, we are virtual, but we do really make a hard push to share the best ideas, the best practices. And that, by the way, is true not only for online publishing, that's true in our events business. You know, our military team has the biggest component of our, of our event revenue line item at this point. And those guys have been phenomenal about sharing the things that have worked and the things that haven't worked with the rest of the team as we stand up new events. So, you know, having, I hate to sound too, you know, consultanty, but having something that almost looks like a center of excellence where people are sharing the things that are the best practices and ideas is something that's worked for us. And that's true also with our advertiser relationship. So I think it's true in the way that we publish video, it's true in the way that we write text. And it's true. And quite frankly, almost every component of the business.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And then from, from measuring and, and optimizing things, you, you mentioned doing some, some testing and, and utilizing AI and that part of it. You know, how do you, how do you use data? And I, again, you know, in some cases, AI makes a recommendation. It's, it's not necessarily taken, but, you know, how do you, how do you look at measuring success and using data throughout the process to, you know, focus on the right things and improve. Improve things.
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Yeah. So the biggest component of the way that I, that we think about and use data is, you know, I think the world is way past this place where you can measure, measure it just in page views or in bounce rate. Really what we're looking for is having people that are truly engaged with the content. And when you look at what, in my view is probably the most meaningful platform today, which is YouTube. YouTube is using that data to figure out which ones of our videos get picked up by the algorithm and which ones do not. So we look at every single metric, but the biggest metric to me is watch time, time on site, time engaged with our posts. It's not just, did somebody look at something for 15 seconds? And again, in the case of Donut, we have an average watch time that's over 15 minutes for a video. So we're in a completely different realm. I mean, you're actually past the realm of average watch time on a traditional television show. And to me, that is the most meaningful single metric. But we look at, quite frankly, everything.
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Yeah.
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How much of a feedback loop is that? When creative ideas or original ideas often are the things that Drive the interest in the first place. How do your teams look at that of like, how much should we look at the data to drive the next idea versus original ideas?
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I think it's actually much more nuanced than that. I think when we look at particularly in the video realm, a lot of the things when we're seeing watch time fall off or we're seeing people don't love a video, it's not just the idea for the video, but a lot of it is actually what's happening in post production. What's happening with the edit? Are the edits fast enough? Are we meandering on a topic for too long? And those are the things that over time I think our team has really started to learn from. The second thing in terms of the feedback loop, which is beyond the data, is also just watching the commenting. What do people love? And even going back two years, Donut did not do a lot of off road content. Turns out that's something that the audience really loves. We did a few off road videos. We, we have a couple of guys both on the creative team and in the cast that are super passionate about off roading themselves and we created series around that because that's what not only the audience loved, but that's what the team loves.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And so, you know, think thinking a few years down the road here, you know, to creators launching product lines, publishers are, you know, acting as entertainment studios, brands are building their own media arms or, you know, lots of different angles going on right now from your vantage point. You know, I know 2030 sounds like the far distant future, but man, it's like four years from now.
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Right.
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You know, what is the successful media entity of 2030 look like and what role will a company like yours play in that landscape?
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Yeah, so I mean, I would hope that we're at the forefront of playing in that landscape, but I just keep going. I always return to the notion that user behavior will ever be shifting. And so you have to continuously look at where's the behavior going. Is it going to television sets? That's a seismic shift that by the way, we've seen over the course of the past 18 months, where every single YouTube channel that we run, 18 months ago, the number one watch device was phones, every single channel. Now the number one watch device is televisions. And when you talk about 2030, I think we're going to see the evolution, we're going to see the continued evolution of that shift, which is it was only a couple years ago that it was impossible for a single creator or even a company our size to get on tv. What would you have to do? You'd have to go to a production studio, you'd have to go to a network. Maybe you'd go to Netflix. Now you're going to YouTube. You can do it yourself. Yes. You want partners. In our case, we, we have a PopSci fast TV channel. We have a donut fast TV channel that's exclusively on Samsung. But to me, you want to make sure that you are at every single distribution point that's available to you, that's relevant to your audience, where your audience wants to engage with you. And you have to consistently build a360 business. And those are the principles. I'm not smart enough to say in 2030, Facebook's not going to be dominating televisions. None of us know that. Because four years ago, everything happening with ChatGPT seemed like that would be far in the distance. The notion that YouTube would be double the size of television watch time consumption to a Netflix, that seemed like a crazy thought. So the reality is I don't think any of us can necessarily pick the platforms. We just have to be nimble enough to be where our audience is.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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And so taking the time scale down a little bit. You know, as we wrap up here, a couple, a couple last questions for you. If we were having this interview one year from now, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
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C
I think we would be talking about as it relates to our business. We would unquestionably be talking about the success of our military and defense vertical and we would be talking about the fact that we had the biggest military influencer conference that we've ever had and built a great business around providing an awesome service to veterans that are looking for the next opportunity in the their lives. I think that's going to be a big growth driver for the business. I hope as we would sit at the end of 2026, that we would have a lot to talk about with our home science and auto vertical as it related to creating great experiences for our audience and our video content being everywhere.
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B
Yeah. Love it.
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A
Well, Andrew, thanks so much for joining today. Last question for you before we wrap up. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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C
I read a lot and I get up at 5 in the morning to clear my head.
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B
Nice.
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A
Nice. Love it. Well, again I'd like to thank Andrew Perlman, co founder and CEO at Recurrent for joining the show. You can learn more about Andrew and recurrent by following the links in the show notes. This episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack tech services, tech talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn more@teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you like the episode, hit subscribe and drop a rating so others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just visit GregKilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co. Op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile. The Agile Brand.