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00:00The beauty of the brands that we look at are they have to be brands that have a cultural resonance
00:06and value to the communities that we serve, right?
00:10So there has to be deep trust, has to be authentic, and it has to have the what we like
00:18to call the North Star, right?
00:20And that North Star of for us, that North Star is can you use a business to develop a community,
00:27right?
00:27And does that fit within our framework of community development?
00:32And so as we look out beyond sort of what's happening in the next 12 months, 18 months, but looking
00:39out to say, okay, what we need to have 50 years from now, what can be relevant 50 years from
00:45now, what can drive economic value 50 years from now, as well as cultural value and heritage, Revolt stands out.
00:52And what they're doing at Offscript, we love.
00:55Well, give me a sense here, when we talk about culture, obviously Essence is an iconic brand that I think
01:01every black family, certainly every black woman had on their coffee table back in the days.
01:06That brand has extended to a new generation.
01:09Revolt kind of came about after the fact, speaking to a newer, younger generation.
01:14What's the thread that combines it?
01:16So the thread for us is multi-generational, right?
01:20We look at, like I said, we're looking 50 years out.
01:23We want brands that are here 50 years out.
01:26We want to build businesses that are here 100 years from now.
01:30So multi-generational becomes a big, big part of that strategy, right?
01:34And so if you take a look at Essence, Essence is now truly a multi-generational brand, right?
01:42You go to festival, you see it in person.
01:44You look at our data, you see it in the data, right?
01:47We're truly serving multiple generations, right?
01:51With that brand, with the content, with the festival, all the experiences there, right?
01:57Revolt has, Revolt is now on its second generation, if you will, right?
02:02Whereas Essence is probably pushing on its fourth generation, right?
02:06And so we like brands that have that type of staying power, right?
02:10In addition to that, where it fits in is, you know, Essence, women.
02:15Women, women, women, right?
02:18Refinery29, women.
02:19Women, women, women.
02:20Women are driving the economy.
02:22They are making the decisions in the household.
02:25They are influencing.
02:26But what Revolt has are the men that they care about, right?
02:31And the men that care about them.
02:33And so what we're now able to do is to offer to the entire marketplace a sort of nucleus
02:40around youth culture, multi-generational youth culture, and then underneath it all now infrastructure
02:47and scale.
02:49Scale.
02:50Talk a little bit about that word.
02:51Does this give you greater leverage when it comes to advertising, when it comes to brand
02:57deals, having what is effectively now a broader customer base, if you will, for lack of a
03:02better phrase?
03:03So it does a couple of things.
03:05One, it does give scale, right?
03:07The other thing that it does is efficiency.
03:09So we're making it easier for clients to be able to engage with our communities, right?
03:15For them to invest in our communities, for them to be at our experiences, for them to
03:20get content that they care about and that's going to drive impact.
03:23It also now gives us a very large creator network, right?
03:28One of the largest creator networks, especially when you think about multicultural and cultural,
03:34right?
03:34It gives us in women.
03:36So Revolt has had a very strong network of podcasts and of creators.
03:42We now get to combine that with Essence and our CreateHer network that we launched about a
03:48year ago.
03:48And now we're bringing even more scale to that.
03:51So not only are we now playing in what used to be traditional digital media, as well as
03:57print.
03:57So you should know it's still on the coffee tables.
04:00We just relaunched it this year.
04:02Actually, we relaunched it at festival, right?
04:05So deeper storytelling, larger format, better quality paper, more focused on the people that
04:14enjoy reading, as opposed to that just want to skim for headlines, right?
04:19So deeper storytelling with incredible journalists.
04:22And as you know, in our community, there are opportunities for our creators and our journalists
04:33are shrinking by the day.
04:35We're taking the opposite path.
04:37We're creating new opportunities.
04:39And deals like this allow us to continue to do that and now to do that at scale with
04:44efficiency for clients and a deep, deep cultural knowledge.
04:48So one of the things that you look at in the market today, and it's AI this and it's AI
04:53that, yeah, AI can bring you reach.
04:56It can bring you scale.
04:57Larger digital platforms can bring you reach.
04:59It can bring you scale.
05:00But they don't know the culture, right?
05:02They can't deliver the culture the way that we can.
05:05When you pair technology with that deep knowledge and that history, you can now deliver deep,
05:11deep cultural knowledge and impact for our advertisers.
05:15Do brands, do those advertisers want that culture anymore?
05:19There's been a lot of talk about, at least publicly, some of the pullback from going after
05:24more diverse audiences.
05:25Are you seeing any impact from that?
05:27So there's a distinct difference between DEI and the DEI conversation and the culture
05:35conversation, right?
05:36The culture conversation is what it is that makes people do what they do and why they do
05:42it and how they do it, what they're going to buy, why they're going to buy.
05:45Do I trust this?
05:47Do I not trust this?
05:48Right?
05:48That's the culture piece, right?
05:49The DEI piece is something that I believe has been fabricated to disconnect our communities,
06:03right?
06:03And so the impact that it's had on our businesses is tremendous.
06:07You can speak to any black business, any black-owned business.
06:10You speak to people in different communities.
06:13There has been a decided impact on the DEI pullback and pushback, right?
06:20However, that doesn't mean that because we're black-owned businesses or that we serve black
06:27communities, that we're not still the growth engine of the economy.
06:32It still doesn't mean that we're not the cultural drivers of the economy.
06:36So we're still that.
06:37And as long as brands want to continue to grow and they want to find new opportunities to grow,
06:41they're going to need the cultural elements that we bring.
06:45And it's all around you.
06:46You look at the influence that we have in music.
06:48But the brands understand that.
06:50They're willing to articulate that publicly.
06:52I mean, your partner in Offscript now, you're on the board there with Dottavio Samuels,
06:57he's been very vocal about this, about how he sees black culture as being American culture,
07:03as being a big driver of the economy.
07:05But there are so many brands that are reticent to embrace that publicly now because they fear the backlash.
07:11Dottavio is an incredible leader, right?
07:14He's the reason that I get excited about Revolt and Offscript, right?
07:21The brands that stepped away or that shifted their DEI policies or their DEI projects
07:34are not the only brands out in the marketplace, right?
07:37There's a ton of brands out there that still respect us as a community, still respect the value that we
07:44bring.
07:45And those are the brands that are going to continue to win, right?
07:48So if you think about it from a consumer perspective, if you're not supporting a community
07:54or you're not advertising to a community, then what you're in effect doing is limiting your ability to grow
08:00and your opportunity to grow.
08:01So what we're starting to see is even brands that have pulled back are starting to come back, right?
08:07Because they need that growth, too.
08:09We're a fast-growing community, right?
08:12If you think about Latina, black communities, that's where the growth is.
08:15That's where new opportunities are.
08:18That's who's driving culture.
08:19That's who's driving style.
08:20So they want to be in that business.
08:23They may not be saying it as publicly as they were,
08:26but they are coming back and they are starting to invest.
08:30And how do you articulate that, too?
08:32And I'll just draw on one of your live events.
08:34Essence Fest, one of the biggest festivals out there.
08:37Huge economic impact for the city of New Orleans, where it's been held now for, what, 30 years or 32
08:43years or something.
08:45But I know the contract with New Orleans is over.
08:48There's been some talk as to whether Essence Fest will actually return.
08:51When you have quantifiable economic impact in the hundreds of millions of dollars,
08:56why is there a debate about whether you'll be back?
08:58No, I don't think the debate is whether or not we'll be back.
09:02Or let me rephrase that.
09:05The debate is whether or not we'll be back in New Orleans, right?
09:10So we just had festival July 4th weekend.
09:16505,000 people showed up, according to the papers in New Orleans and the people that are keeping the data
09:25there, right?
09:26We had 50,000, 60,000 people come through the convention center a day free, right?
09:33Over 460 hours of programming for those people that came by, free, right?
09:39The economic impact is tremendous.
09:41With our partner hotels, we're running 95-plus hotel occupancy in the middle of summer and one of the hottest
09:52weekends of the year.
09:53So we're driving a tremendous amount of economic impact there.
09:57And we're working with the city so that we continue to do that and we continue to grow, right?
10:02It's not that the question isn't whether or not Essence will be back.
10:06The question is, hey, will it be back in the city of New Orleans?
10:09Do you think it will be back there next year?
10:11We are working like hell to make that happen, right?
10:14We're going to work because our community deserves what it is that we bring to market.
10:20And New Orleans has been a partner for 32 years.
10:22They've been a good partner for 32 years.
10:24While we've seen investments shrink, right?
10:27We certainly expect that we will be able to come to terms and continue what we're doing.
10:32We're excited about next year.
10:34I am curious how you merge and sort of how you balance out the content creation side of the business,
10:40the live event side of the business, and everything that goes in between.
10:43I know you didn't disclose details, financial details of the deal with Offscript.
10:49Do you want to disclose them?
10:50No.
10:50Okay.
10:51But give me a sense here because, I mean, you bought Refinery.
10:54Obviously, you bought Refinery29, obviously Essence.
10:57I mean, is the return, the potential return that you get off of this partnership, this minority investment in Offscript,
11:04is that going to potentially be as accretive as those other deals that you've made?
11:10So I think so.
11:12Because what we're now able to do is to bring infrastructure together, bring capabilities together, and as I said earlier,
11:18drive that scale, right?
11:20So we're excited about the opportunity to be able to do that.
11:24And I think one of the other things is we don't need to own everything, but what we do need
11:29to be able to do is to be able to access everything.
11:32This gives us the access that we need.
11:34This gives us a great team over there to work with alongside our great team over at Essence.
11:41We now have the opportunity to merge our inventories, our product, to go to clients with bigger offerings and better
11:51offerings.
11:51So that's very exciting.
11:53And the other thing for us is it's also important that these brands that have been driving our culture are
12:00here when we're not here, right?
12:02So we're also looking at it through those lenses.
12:05When you talk about what you want to be, what Sundial, I should say, not you specifically, but what you
12:12want Sundial to be long term,
12:15what does that evolution look like?
12:17Do you foresee maybe doing more scripted content rather than just the creator-led content?
12:23Do you have any potential of, say, moving into sports or gaming or anything like that?
12:30Sports is exciting, which is another good part of the reason for Revolt because Revolt launched Revolt Sports a few
12:39years ago.
12:39So we're excited about being able to partner on that as well and help them to grow that and to
12:45scale that.
12:46So we're excited about that.
12:49On the scripted side, we also are investors in Macro Studios, which has put out some incredible, incredible work,
13:01like Judas and the Black Messiah won an Oscar for that.
13:06Fences, so high-quality work that is deeply entrenched in our community is where we focus.
13:14So we're excited about that.
13:15And all of these things, if you think about them, the connective tissue is that they're telling our stories.
13:22And it's people that come from our communities that are telling our stories, right?
13:27And it's people that are looking out in front of, hey, what do my children get to inherit from me?
13:34What's the work that I get to leave behind?
13:37Those are the people that are running these businesses.
13:39Those are the people that are telling these stories.
13:42Those are the people that are building this infrastructure.
13:44And so if we can build infrastructure that is connective, and that's another thing that I'm really excited and proud
13:51of, too,
13:51is having different businesses that serve our community actually be connected with a strategy to do more.
13:59Do you think this business, and more important, this business model will stay in the community?
14:03I just think back a few decades ago with the rise of BET, which was independent and went through several
14:10iterations under Paramount Skydance or somewhere now.
14:15Is there a plan to make sure that when Rich Dennis is long gone that this is still within the
14:22community, or does that not matter?
14:24Yeah, it matters, right?
14:26But what we're really focused on is building strong businesses that can last multiple generations and that will be here
14:35to serve multiple generations, right?
14:37We're seeing all the disruption around us today, right?
14:41Nothing is guaranteed, right, because of that disruption and how things move so quickly.
14:46What we're trying to do is we're trying to invest in and build businesses that can move at the speed
14:51of that disruption and become disruptors themselves, right?
14:54So that's where we're focused.
14:57When Rich Dennis is not here, the people that will be making those decisions will make those decisions on how
15:04it goes.
15:05But while I am here, my focus is building things that are going to be durable, that are going to
15:10be scalable, sustainable, and profitable, right?
15:13And then where opportunities show up, we will do that, right?
15:17So I've had the good fortune of having built a business in Sundial, in our consumer business, Sundial Brands, and
15:26having sold that to Unilever.
15:28But by selling that, I was able to unlock the capital to be able to now make these other investments
15:35and make these other plays, which now has continued lasting impact in our community, right?
15:40So wherever we can unlock dollars to be able to continue to invest that, we will do that.
15:46For right now, we're focused on building these things to make them solid, strong, durable, lasting, and that create value
15:53for shareholders and for our communities.
15:56And that, I think, will determine where we go post that, right?
16:01But at the end of the day, I believe that having the capital to be able to support the businesses
16:07in our community and the people in our community is the number one priority.
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