Month: September 2021

The channel will be programmed with a repository of existing Barstool programming, such as the “The Pro Football Football Show” and “Pardon My Take,” as well as one Sling-exclusive show, “The Brandon Walker College Football Show,” hosted by gambling analyst Brandon Walker. It will also feature a number of live pre-game shows ahead of high-profile college football games. Sling will serve as the sponsor for those pre-game shows. All in, over 100 hours of Barstool original programming will be available on Sling, Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini said. 

“We want to bring Barstool to as many people as possible in as many forms as possible,” Nardini said. 

The partnership is wagering that some of Barstool’s devoted fans will migrate over from Facebook, which still delivers the bulk of Barstool’s platform video views — 79% of Barstool’s 536 million platform video views came from Facebook last month, according to Tubular Labs data — or from one of the platforms where their content is available on demand. Barstool’s video content is also available in channels on Roku, Fire TV and Apple TV.

“We are confident that Barstool’s incredibly engaged and loyal audience will embrace the Sling experience,” Sling evp and president Michael Schwimmer said. 

Sling TV is either the second or third-largest OTT provider of streaming live TV. It has 2.4 million subscribers, according to Dish Network’s most recent quarterly earnings; in May, Disney disclosed that Hulu’s Live TV offering had just under 4 million subscribers (Disney reported that Hulu had almost 43 million subscribers overall in its third quarter earnings). In spring 2020, Google disclosed that YouTube TV had 3 million subscribers. 

Barstool is part of a growing stable of digital-native brands that now offer channels on Sling, including Tastemade, Live Live and Bon Appetit.

Barstool has experimented with exclusive video content in the past. For a brief period, it was using exclusive video content to entice people to sign up for its own premium subscription product, Barstool Gold (Barstool abandoned its Gold product in the spring of 2020). 

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

I saw your recent announcement that you were leaving your job at a legacy news publication?

It was my first full-time job out of college. I was there for over two years. It was really exciting. I started on a temporary contract, but there wasn’t much stability. I ended up switching teams within the company to start a magazine for young people. I had a full-time role with benefits — and I felt stable. But it crashed and burned. The pandemic didn’t help, but the project didn’t have the support that it needed to turn it into something big. 

The company wasn’t as open to change as they said they were. It was a constant frustration. They are bringing in young people to help and change the paradigm, but they didn’t utilize them in the most effective way with their talent. We had to conform to fit this mainstream publication. I was constantly contorting my ideas to fit what’s seen as an accessible and objective story by their editors and their audience. Then I realized: I don’t have to do that. The rest of my career doesn’t have to be that.

There was no urgency to change or adapt to the times. I didn’t want to stay on what felt like a sinking ship.

What’s sinking, in your opinion? That publication or the industry as a whole?

I mean, they’re a billion-dollar business. They’re going to be making lots of money for years to come. But their influence is eroding, and trust in them is eroding. In 10 years, I don’t see any mainstream publication being the voice that people are going to when they want to learn something. It’ll be smaller publications and independent actors online who have made names for themselves outside of the mainstream. We live in a society where we don’t need mainstream publications to share our perspectives. There’s less dependence on these institutions compared to previous generations.

So why did you decide to leave now?

I was looking for a new job for most of the year. I knew I didn’t want to work for a social media company because it’s similar to the mainstream media. There’s a lot of negative sentiment and scrutiny. I wanted to join an exciting industry, at a growing company. I’m making a lot more now than I was and more than I would have made if I’d worked at that publication for 10 years.

Why do you think many other journalists seem to be leaving the industry?

I’m sure the pandemic has a big role. It made you reassess what you’re spending your time and energy on. If it didn’t feel good to you, why keep doing it? It made it easier for those kinds of decisions. Especially for younger journalists. It’s not the mid-career people leaving the industry; it’s people in their first five to seven years. That’s a problem for the talent pipeline for the next generation of journalism. Maybe they’ll want to come back, but they are leaving because they are recognizing those same issues.

You get into journalism because you have this idealism to tell great stories, to change things about your community, to share underrepresented perspectives. I feel like it requires a lot of enthusiasm and energy to get some of these high-impact stories out the door. Then it’s like, why am I putting all this into this corporation? I’ll just tell stories on my own that I find myself. I have the experience as a journalist, and I don’t feel the burden of needing to conform to my editor because they’re worried about blowback from a 65-year-old white dude from California.

Mainstream media isn’t realizing that young people can build their own platforms to tell their own stories. I want to work on short films and mini documentaries on my own platforms. I don’t feel guilty leaving. It’s not on me to save the media industry.

Explain how you developed your flexible working model. 

When we interviewed over 1,000 associates [staff], we talked to senior leaders from different generations, ethnicities, nationalities. And we realized we needed to reimagine how, where and when work gets done — not just where — to maximize productivity. That allowed us to think beyond just how many days are spent in the office and how many at home. So if you’re a young mom with kids and you’re juggling different priorities, the flexibility to do asynchronous work, and not be locked in back-to-back meetings, is useful. Likewise if you’re a dual-career family like mine is, and you’re balancing who picks up the kids when one of you is traveling and who attends parents night at school, the flexibility to schedule your work around these other priorities, is useful. So we realized that was much broader than just a matter of going hybrid.

So you’re letting staff pick when they’re in the office and when they’re remote? 

We really want them [staff] to think about how can they be most productive — think about the work, talk to their teams. We’ve been training leaders and managers to sit down with our teams and talk through what they want to do individually and what works best when done as a team. It’s a balance, and it’s a conversation between individual and team needs. Because we’re decentralized, we can break it down into teams reasonably easily. We’re also running training [in] important areas for inclusivity, like proximity bias. 

What difference will halving travel make for staff wellbeing, efficiencies and how will those savings be reinvested? 

We really value going out to local markets, understanding what’s going on. However, we realize there are times when we would have traveled before, where we now think we can achieve that virtually. And that’s a huge benefit to the health and wellbeing of the person traveling. Having personally done roles where I’m changing timezone every two, three days, it’s really hard on the body. But it’s also, obviously, around sustainability. We believe we can still provide a very connected culture, but do it in a way where travel is for purpose, and really think through, how do I make that travel count? Instead of that one or two-day meeting that I’m traveling a long way for, how do I make time to sit down with the same associates in a focus group conversation? How do I go talk to the local community? Naturally, there will be big cost savings too, though we don’t quote those publicly. We want to make sure that we reinvest some of that into really powerful virtual and hybrid [tech] experiences. 

What are the difficulties in rolling out a strategy like this?

The big challenge is how do you provide enough of a framework for 32,000 people in 80 countries in 140 offices that empowers them, when it’s not a one-size-fits-all. It’s tempting to try and provide more certainty than you can just to provide some sense of calm for a team or a unit. But we know that tends to create one that’s hard to do, we know that the most important thing is that we can be flexible, and we can ensure that within that framework, it works. No matter what the ebbs and flows. And you can imagine running a global business, it’s felt different being on separate parts of the world through this pandemic. And so the challenge is to make sure that you provide enough framework, and that you that you lean into that — what you don’t know — and be open and vulnerable about it.

A lot of people will still be carrying grief and a range of other emotions when they return to the office. How will you manage that?

Prior to the pandemic we had a whole team around health and well being. So we have a structure of support, which associates can access for free help and advice around how they deal with personal health issues and those of their family if they’re dealing with mental fatigue, burnout, depression. And then as we think about coming back [to offices], and spending more time face to face, one of the other things we have always valued is vulnerable leadership. So, talking with people about struggles that everyone is having and voicing those concerns, is the first step. Because if you think you’re the only one having it, or you think that people aren’t really understanding where you are [psychologically], then I think it becomes even worse. It’s really important to give permission for everyone to be vulnerable. Sometimes a leader needs to take the first step and be vulnerable themselves. 

To continue that growth, the company is focusing on social platforms where users are sharing hair care tips and tricks. Olaplex is not only using paid ads but also working with hair care professionals and influencers to get the word out. It’s unclear how much Olaplex is spending on advertising on those platforms or how it divides its media budget as the company would not share exact figures. 

“We’ve seen our engagement increase; we’ve also seen our followers increase on Instagram as well,” said Wong of the focus on paid social platforms and how TikTok in particular can help boost overall brand awareness and engagement on other platfroms like Instagram. “In January 2020, we had 1.4 million followers on Instagram. Now we have 2.2 million. All those followers want to be part of our community. We want to continue that same authentic engagement.” On TikTok, Olaplex has 55.4 thousand followers.

Aside from paid ads, influencer marketing and organic content, Olaplex is looking to engage potential customers by combing through hashtags to find content where it would make sense for the company’s account to comment. On TikTok, the Olaplex hashtag has 290 million views, up from 24 million in April of 2020, according to the company. 

“We’re commenting and engaging with our audience,” said Vanessa Schneider, director of social media at Olaplex. “That’s been really beneficial for our brand awareness. We’ll comment on a photo that’s either helping someone out if their hair [needs help] or giving them advice. Often that’ll get 6,000 likes or 9,000 likes — a large amount for a comment —so that’s why we’re really invested in building the team to [help] build community that way.” 

Focusing on paid social platforms like TikTok and Instagram makes sense to Nik Sharma, DTC investor and advisor and founder of Sharma Brands. “TikTok can be an incredible top of the funnel channel for brands,” said Sharma. “If you’ve got good content then it does well, it’s getting saved or commented on, so engagement is high. It’s almost used organically like Pinterest meets Instagram, which is why beauty brands have such success there.” 

While growing a brand using social platforms like TikTok and Instagram can be cost effective, it can also be a tricky balance for a more premium brand like Olaplex, explained brand analyst and co-founder of Metaforce Allen Adamson. 

“Clearly their product is relevant and the audience on TikTok is sucking up this type of content,” said Adamson. “They need to make sure they don’t get lost in all the noise of all the other [beauty] brands on TikTok and make sure they still stay aspirational.”

As vaccination efforts continue, performance marketing firm Tinuiti has carefully launched a company-funded program, sponsoring for select employees to travel to offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta and others to meet in person. It’s a move Jackie Edmundson, svp of strategic business operations hopes will bridge the physical gap between staffers and keep Tinuiti’s company culture intact. Digiday caught up with Edmundson to talk more about the initiative, employee mental health during the pandemic and the future of work.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity

With the pandemic, how is Tinuiti going about maintaining company culture?

Since COVID-19 started in March of 2020, we’ve actually hired over 400 employees. Tinuiti’s just growing at such a rapid pace, and we’re close to 800 employees. So when you look at those numbers, half of us have never met in person. We’ve shared so much through Zoom, through the screen, meeting people’s kids, meeting fur babies, celebrating birthdays [and] promotions. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried [and] had lots of hard conversations over everything that has been going on in the past year with COVID-19 and social issues that we’ve all had to face together as a team, and thought it would be really helpful and meaningful to be able to bring some people together to really continue to forge those bonds that we’ve been able to make over the past year.

So it’s a company-sponsored trip to meet coworkers. What are the requirements to go and where does budget come from to sponsor it?

It’s really open to anyone at any level. We really want to make sure that we get a diverse group going from different divisions at all different levels from all different places across the country. The only requirement is that it’s someone that you work closely with, but you’ve never met in person. We’re going to ask them about what they want to do [upon arrival]. Some might be pairs that are working on a similar customer. We can fly them in together to discuss that customer, have lunch, have happy hour and do some productive work. If it’s more of a mentor-mentee relationship, that day may look a little bit different. I think what we’re going to do is really customize the day to meet the needs of those individuals so they can really maximize their time. 

I put around $50,000 aside in the budget for these trips so that we can send as many people as possible and all of that will be paid for by the company. We have a pretty robust culture and employee experience budget as it is.

With the rise in concern around the delta variant, has thinking around this initiative changed at all?

Right now, our current thinking is to continue the initiative. And again, it’s all voluntary. So if someone were to say, ‘Hey, I really appreciate that I was picked for this. But based off of what’s going on, I just need to postpone, or I’m just not comfortable.’ That’s OK as well. But as long as you’re vaccinated, as long as you’re comfortable, we’re going to do everything in our power to make that happen and make sure that happens in a safe and effective manner.

What was in place prior to the pandemic?

Our last retreat was in the fall of 2019. We have regional retreats across the country in three different locations, so that was the last time that we were really able to get together.

What can the rest of the industry be doing to uplift employees in uncertain times?

[This initiative is] going to go a long way for our culture and that comes out not only in our teaming, but also the results we get for our clients when we’re connected in that way. I think the heart of it is what works for your employees and how do your employees want to connect? What would be the most meaningful way to do that? That’s really where the focus is — listening to them, relating to them and then knowing how to react and to support them during this time. I know we’re not fully out of the pandemic yet, but this is kind of that light at the end of the tunnel.