38 GENIUS INTERVIEW Stephen Mai
narrative. How I did that contradicted every single rule of how to use social and how to use content. With U OK M8?, I took a platform that had never put up premium-looking, longform, serious content and basically did just that, around a topic like mental health. In theory, it shouldn’t have worked but it managed to be one of the most successful narratives. We engaged 36 million people and challenged a generation of people in the UK to talk about mental health differently. The same with the Trash Isles. I remember being told that nobody would care about plastic in the ocean because it was a boring topic. We were able to reach 350 million people, get the likes of Al Gore, Ross Kemp, and Judy Dench to become our “citizens” and create a real social movement around a campaign that could very easily have been a PR stunt. What I’ve learned is that you can set your own rules, as long as you do everything authentically. You think about not just the overriding narrative but how you achieve it at every single level, so it becomes authentic. Your editorial strategy from the foundation upward and the entire business is moving toward that narrative, so you’re not just saying something, but it actually becomes true. You’re actually getting your audience to shift their perception around mental health or plastics in the ocean. You’re actually inspiring people to make that change. That’s how you shift the brand, that’s how you can influence a generation. There was a big period when I said out loud that I was essentially going against every single thing the company had known and been successful at. The fact that you can do that, be really brave, and they can come out with eight Cannes Lion Awards –two of them Grand Prix Awards – is kind of amazing.
FEED: Is that kind of thing easier to do at some brands than others? SM: It’s worked in the business I have been in because they have been small enough where you can actually make a real impact. Coming to Boiler Room, it’s a credible brand but it hasn’t exploited all the opportunities of the credibility of the audience and the different narratives within all these cultures. FEED: How do you plan when you’re trying to innovate and advance a brand? worked for have come from really looking at the insights, the audience and the opportunity. Using LADBible as an example, if you’ve got a massive audience, if you reach a billion people a month, and the challenge of the business is that people don’t think that audience is credible, the obvious thing to do is to find a way to do something positive around that audience to make it credible. Having worked at Vice and MTV, I know that people are politically engaged and very conscious about the environment. It’s taking things that you know and taking those elements to drive the things you’re trying to achieve. Part of it is instinct and part of it is really dissecting all the different insights and information you have access to. Another part is testing and learning. Digital allows you to do that. You don’t have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on massive campaigns to develop an understanding of what’s going to work. I would always advocate, if you believe in something and the insights are there and it feels right for the brand, use digital tools to find out if you can make it work. FEED: Boiler Room has an online component, events, VOD content. How will that develop and expand? SM: Boiler Room is interesting because it almost acts like a modern cultural institution. It has access to an audience that is hyper-interested in culture and the arts. It regularly connects to audiences in real life. So not only are we interacting with our audience seeing and experiencing the brand as a part of their reality, but we also get to see and experience the brand with them as well, and that gives us a lot of advantages. Part of what we can do is explore more ways to interact with our audience SM: A lot of the campaigns that have really transformed the brands I have
WHAT I’VE LEARNED IS THAT YOU CAN SET YOUR OWN RULES, AS LONG AS YOU DO EVERYTHING AUTHENTICALLY
in real life. And I think we can do that with installations. We’ve recently done an installation with the artist Gaika at Somerset House as a part of our SYSTEM campaign which is designed to subvert the narrative around migration and the highlight the influence that migration has had on music and culture. We’re also looking at expanding our global footprint through ticketed events and bigger shows. Beyond that, there’s a massive content opportunity. We have a very creative team and very passionate people within the business, and there’s a huge opportunity to develop TV show formats and content for the new digital age. Because we’re not tied to a platform or a website – we’re completely platform agnostic – there
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