Digital strategist, author, and entertainment industry veteran Chris Hood talks about his award-winning work with films like Jurassic Park and Apollo 13, one HUGE missed opportunity with the Power Rangers, why even the worst leaders you know can be mentors, using the cloud before the cloud existed to develop the first known music streaming platform, why all businesses are the same business, the overhype of AI, the evolution of streaming versus cable, the fastest way to identify your target audience, and why entertainment is entertainment.

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Hello, Action Catalyst listeners. This is your

host, Adam Outland. And today we have our guest Chris Hood

joining us. Chris is the digital strategist, speaker and author

with over 35 years of experience in business development, digital

strategy consulting with the largest companies in the world.

Previously, he worked at Google as the head of business

innovation and strategy. He's also spent time at Fox, Disney,

Universal, and Electronic Arts. Chris, great to meet you.

Listen, I know, there's all kinds of interesting questions

to ask you about what's going on here. And now for you, but I

know your bio talked about being the best professional at popping

popcorn in a movie theater before working in the movie

business a little bit. Could you maybe color that in a little bit?

Yeah. Well, when I started my career path when I

was 16, 17 years old, of course, we're all faced with what do you

want to be when you grow up, I had two real strong passions, I

had a passion for movies. And I had a passion for technology.

Now I was a typical teenager sitting in literally in my

basement playing video games on my computer, all the way back to

1986. So before computers really became a thing. And so clearly,

when presented with the question about what do you want to be

when you grow up, and I had the choice between movies or

computers, the choice was obvious, go be in the movies,

because there is really no such thing as computer careers. So I

solely pick the job where I could get in and see free

movies. So go work at the local movie theater, sell tickets,

make popcorn, clean, theaters really embrace that idea of,

well, this is my first step into being in the movies as being

your customer first. Yeah. But that grew at the beauty of it is

the passion of movies grew. And then later in my career, the

impact of technology and the evolution of where we are today

with technology definitely collided. And that convergence

of loving technology and loving movies is really what was the

sweet spot. And I was able to get into some great companies

like Disney universal Fox Broadcasting to continue to

leverage that foundation that I had all the way back when I was

a kid. How do we bring technology into entertainment?

And how do we take entertainment and make it more interesting,

using technology? And that's really stayed with me all the

way up until today.

Yeah. And so what was the first break in?

Well, when I was at the theater I, I started to do

marketing did some really incredible things for films like

Jurassic Park and Apollo 13. And some Disney films. And that

marketing effort earned me recognition, I, I won some

international awards for marketing in the theater

business, I began to get more recognition. And obviously, I

was able to continue that, to start working with some great

companies. What was interesting, though, is in between that I

had, I had a slew of crazy opportunities that I, I don't

know if I regret them. Or if I just look back and say what if,

but as an example, I started to do a lot more work in 3d design,

or computers. And so I was presented with an opportunity to

go to a studio, it turned out to be a job interview, although I

wasn't told it was a job interview. So I show up to the

studio, they're showing me special effects and what they

were trying to build, and they thought, like you would be great

for this job. And it turned out to be special effects artist, or

the Power Rangers. Now, again, at the time, I was like, Well,

what is this silly show the Power Rangers and this special

effects like they were literally drawing animations in like fire

on the screen. And I'm like, I don't get it. Like I do get it,

but I don't get it. Anyway, I laughed. And then five years

later, is I should have done that I really should have done

that. That would have been a huge opportunity. I should pay

closer attention to the trends of industries. Because I think,

and again, as I fast forward, where we begin to see innovation

materializing it becomes clear when you understand what those

trends are, and can make those connections.

And I'm just mad at you because the power rangers

would have been so much better with a different animation. You

know, it still did pretty good as a show. But you know, one of

the things that a lot of our guests have in common is some

really impactful mentors along the way. And we often don't

learn our craft from nothing. And I was kind of curious if

that was the case for you. If you felt like early in your

career, you were lucky to have a couple of key people and who

they were and what you learned from them.

Yeah, my first manager at the movie theater, I

still keep in touch with her today, we have a great

relationship. And I learned so much from her in terms of toys

and communication styles and management, inspiration, a lot

of the foundational things that I learned at 18 still apply

today. But I will say, I think we all learn even when you have

bad leadership, there are countless examples of really

awful managers that I've had over the years that I can still

point to and say I learned something from that experience.

And I think anybody who can do that, that the great mentors of

our lives are one thing, but the negative experiences are

learning moments, bad leaders, bad managers, a toxic cultures

can teach you, one where you don't want to be and to how you

could potentially do it better.

Is there one in particular, when you share that

lesson that stands out in your mind?

Yeah, definitely. And the biggest one is probably

the one we are all familiar with. We've all been in roles,

we've all had jobs, we've all worked for companies, where the

culture is toxic, where people are stealing each other's ideas,

throwing people under the bus, that type of toxic attitudes

inside of your workplace, create environments that no one wants

to be in. And I have had countless managers,

unfortunately, countless managers, who would come to me

and say, you know, we really need to fix this, what do you

think we should do? You would give them the idea. And then

they would go off and take all the credit for it, or some

problem would happen. And then they would come back and say,

Well, that's all Chris's fault. I remember one example, where I

had a manager say, What do you think we should do? In this

particular situation? It doesn't really matter what the situation

is. And I gave them some suggestions. And they said, No,

I don't like that we're going to do it this way. We're going to

do it my way instead. So they went, we were in executive level

meetings, they expressed everything that we were going to

do, and said that, you know, Chris gave me some of these

ideas, which I didn't, because it was completely against what I

was suggesting to do, the thing failed miserably. So who of

course, was the first person to get the blame? While they were

all Chris's ideas, I told him, We shouldn't do this. And that

attitude at work, destroys cultures. And we are all

familiar with it. And yet we see it constantly happening. So in

everything that I do, in terms of my leadership style, and how

I approach cultures, is to ensure that that type of toxic

behavior is eliminated. But we know and we see it, that when

companies are able to remove that toxic culture and align

themselves more towards a positive, innovative and

customer first experience are more successful. It's in the

facts. It's in the research. And yet, we still have at across the

country.

With your career path, you've done quite a bit it

you switch gears from digital multimedia advertising,

technology platform over to the music industry for a period of

time. And in 2003. You did it was a raucous network. A couple

of questions there. What gave you the feeling of opening and

exploring whole new application of your skill set a different

environment when you add success somewhere else? And then what

was it like leading a team in that space?

So yeah, in the early 2000s, I had an

opportunity to be involved with a startup called ruckus network.

Now this service was basically a counter to illegal music and

file sharing that was prevalent on on campuses and all the way

to the point where the recording industry started suing students

for illegally sharing music. So raucous was an alternative that

allowed you to still get music for free, but be able to do it

in a legal way. And we had basically student licenses so

that you can download and listen to music. Eventually, ruckus

turned into the first known streaming music platform. And

then it got acquired by Universal Music. We were using

cloud when there is no concept of cloud and to give the

listeners a perspective on that. Today, as an example, if you

were to go and create a playlist, you could, in theory,

create a playlist on your mobile device, and then be able to

still access that exact same playlist on any other devices

across your entire framework network that you have, right so

you could go into car and the same playlist would generally be

available in the 2000s there is no concept of that if you wanted

to create a playlist you would have to create a playlist on

your phone, you would have to create a playlist on your iPod,

you would have to create a playlist on your computer, you

would have to replicate that because there is no way of

sharing that same playlist across multiple platforms. And

so we were developing that technology. And again, first

streaming cloud based platform to do it. At the time, I was

also playing, literally playing in the video game space, I have

a pretty maybe it's not a unique perspective on this. But every

business is really the same business, every business. And

I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people out there who will

disagree with me that, especially in entertainment,

whether it's movies, or television, video games, or

music, they're all storytelling mechanisms. They're all

entertainment vehicles, they're all things that we engage with

to separate ourselves from life and, you know, explore different

worlds. So that's a fairly easy conversation I have

entertainment is entertainment, no matter what the vehicle of

that entertainment is. So for me, I just looked at it as just

another way of exploring another part of entertainment. But when

I look at businesses, I would argue that healthcare is really

no different than the movie industry. And the movie industry

is really no different than retail. And retail is really no

different than the video game industry. Businesses are

businesses. And there's really, you know, main factors that are

involved with that, you have customers and you have a

business, and you need to connect to those customers. And

usually, that is done through some level of storytelling,

which we typically call marketing. And there is a sales

process. That's it, that's business. And when people come

and say, Look, my business is different, we do things

differently. We don't do it that way, which again, a lot of toxic

cultures do. They say, oh, oh, I get it. You're different. You

don't have customers? Oh, no, no, we have customers. Okay, oh,

I got it. You're different. You don't care about the security of

your customer data, right? No, we care about the security of

our customer data, okay, you don't have anything to sell. And

when you ask these basic principle questions, you realize

that really no company is different. They have

differentiations, in terms of what their product and services

are, or in terms of their culture, and how they produce

and deliver that. But at the root core of every single

business, you have a customer and you have a service, and

you're selling it. And so for me, raucous, and the music

industry was just a different way to sell music to a different

audience. And it was very successful.

You brought up earlier about like the Power

Rangers example of looking at something that's an add on if

you want to be a part of that. And specifically in your area,

what are some of those trends even right now that you're that

you've trained yourself to pick up on? What's been your process

for keeping up with staying ahead of trends?

Well I'll blow everybody's minds in terms of

what we look at in terms of trends. And what you think is

going to be successful than not successful is a mind blower.

It's not AI. AI is a buzzword right now. It's overly hyped.

It's the shiny new object, and we're already seeing a decline

in the consumption of AI. Obviously, businesses are using

AI AI has been around for 30 plus some odd years. We have all

used AI in one way or another and don't realize it so you

know, translate that I look at AI similar to how I look at 3d

movies, 3d movies was created, you know, back in the 1900s, it

had its ups and downs. 50s at reemerge 1990s. It emerged like

2000s and 10s that reemerged like it's got these moments that

is going up and down. AI is acting in the same way. It's

it's got these ebbs and flows of popularity. It's just become

more accessible for a company like open AI and chat GBT, where

people can actually engage with it, and they find it

interesting. It's those trends that you have to pay attention

to. And you have to recognize, right, most people are coming

into the AI scene right now and saying, Well, we see AI going

up, up, up, up, but they don't realize that it was up at one

point in time, and then it went back down. And now it's coming

back up again. Right? So there's these trends that you have to

pay attention to. And there's a lot of ways that you can do

that. You can go and just read statistical analysis, you know,

where was AI in the 1980s? Heck, if you really want ask chap,

GBT, where was AI in the 1980s. And it will come up and and tell

you where it was that you know, and then there are some trend

reports from industry analysis companies that actually will

show you what the hype, and what types of technologies are

trending. And those are usually 510 years out, and you can start

to see, you know, where are we at? And so a good example of

this would be like 3d printing. So I think research is one of

the big things, but really, where we get into understanding

what to focus on and how to innovate It still ultimately

goes back to consumers, it goes back to us goes back to what are

we engaged with. And when you begin to understand what

problems are out there, because that's all it really is, is

we're trying to solve problems, you have to recognize those

problems, and then be able to apply something to the problem.

A lot of business ideas, like a lot of the AI ideas out there

are nothing but a, we're going to create a company on AI. Well,

it's not really solving a problem. And even if you think

you're really solving a problem, you're probably not. And so

you've got to start with a customer and what their problem

is, and then begin to analyze what you are going to do or

build to solve that problem. And then worry about the technology

that is going to help you enable it, the technology usually comes

last.

I don't know if you have an opinion or a thought

on this particular problem. But this is anecdotal. I'm not sure

if I've got all my my information, right. But I know

that one of the switch to streaming is since he worked

with Disney and others meant it in a lot of ways no ad revenue

to support it the way it did in cable. And so from your

perspective, what's the answer to no ad revenue and the

streaming services and a lot of ways not having that conduit to

prop up their business when their investors start looking at

their piece of the pie? What are your thoughts there?

No advertising today, but there is conversation

going on about and it's clear that this is probably coming

down the pipe is that they will start to offer different tiers,

what you'll find is you'll you'll you'll get a cheaper

advertising tier or a premium, no advertising tier. And I think

most people today are ok with some advertising prevea as an

example, as a streaming platform that has a bunch of movies on

it, you can typically find it on Amazon. And they do advertising

in between it's you know free to see a brand new movie but app

with ads, but they've put like five or six ads in between, you

know, every section of of movie, Disney is definitely talking

about this. And they're saying, Okay, well, you know, we could

do like a 499 Tear with ads, or a you know, 1499 Tear with no

ads. There's a lot of people who would probably take that for 99

and be perfectly content with the ads. But I think the

industry in general is evolving. And if it's not advertising

based, it's definitely going to see a change even with how we

package. I mean, this has been a conversation going on for quite

some time, where you had cable and cable started to run, you

know, all these packages, like you can get all of these

services for one price. And what we found was, well, I don't

watch half of the channels, right? So we started to separate

those. And then you started to see streaming. Well, now what

we're seeing is kind of the death of cable and the

traditional packages, because they are struggling because all

of the streaming services are demanding too much. And

consumers don't like that price increase. So they're looking for

alternative actions. And they're ultimately coming back to

services like Netflix, who they can get a wider variety. There's

still some shifting that I think is going to happen. But cable is

definitely I think on its last legs, the movie industry is

being challenged in terms of getting people back to the

theaters. And streaming services, like Disney plus, are

losing subscribers at an astronomical rate, not just

because the content is bad, but because they're also increasing

the price. But they're increasing the price because

they're losing people because of the content. It's definitely an

interesting field to look at.

In a broader scope, what trends do you think

business leaders in general should be prepared for when it

comes to customer transformation, digital strategies?

Well, companies have to get back to understanding who

their customer is and what their customer wants. That's the

basics basis of everything. Ever since the dawn of business,

there's been a customer and ever moving forward, there will

always be a customer and you don't have a business if you

don't have a customer. So that's the one constant that is not

going to change. So if you understand that the customer is

the constant and everything that you do, what we see now is that

the customer has a stronger voice than ever before. Be that

because of social media and word of mouth and being able to share

opinions and experiences. I had a bad experience. I had a good

experience. All of the videos that we're seeing online about

incidences on airlines like those things are all coming

because customers are engaged with it. And customers have an

easier ability today to move. They don't have to stay with a

streaming service. They can leave it they don't have to stay

with an insurance company. They can leave it they don't have to

buy pizza from the same company. They can they have choices. They

have options. They have access. It's easy to make changes. And

so because consumer expectations are higher than ever before.

Consumer demand is more critical than ever before. And consumer

access and communication externally is higher than ever

before. And that's only going to continue to increase. Consumers

today have more power than they've ever had. As a result,

the businesses, the companies that directly align with what

their customers want, are going to be more successful. And we

see that in examples like Disney, who was losing drastic

amounts of money and consumers, Bud Light, Anheuser Busch, who

lost a boatload of money, it wasn't necessarily a marketing

fiasco, it was a leadership and an alignment fiasco. But when

you are not aligned in the ways that your customer again, who

are they buy, like clearly didn't know who their customer

base was, and what do they want. And Disney clearly doesn't

understand what their consumers want, you will lose business.

And the data is what we have to make decisions, leveraging too

often. And when when we go back to these toxic cultures, like

the boss that I was sharing the story about, your decisions have

to be rooted in what the data tells you. It cannot be open to

interpretation, if this is what starts introducing biases.

Again, I would argue that both Anheuser Busch and Disney two

companies I've alluded to, they're making decisions based

on their own personal biases, the leaders biases, not what the

data is telling them. They don't really care what the data is

telling them. And that's the problem. So you have to take

that data, you have to look at it, whether it's good data or

bad data, I actually just read something before we got on. And

it said, if you get somebody to click on a search and comes to

your site, odds are that your target demographic, right there,

they're actually we're interested enough to click on

something you have to say, we'll figure out who that person is.

That's your target, and start to understand that start to look at

it. And we can leverage this in both positive and negative. If

somebody is clicking on your ad and coming to your site and

engaging with you, there's your demographic, if people are not

that you are deliberately trying to target Well, that's not the

demographic. So both sides is data points that you have to

look at understand. And definitely, you have to make

decisions on.

Let's maybe tie up with this last question if you

don't mind your wealth of information. And luckily, you've

written some stuff that can allow us a deeper insight into

your thoughts. But for this interview, I'd love to know, as

you've moved into leadership, you've had to work through other

people to accomplish goals, not just do it all yourself, and

you've been doing this a long time through other people. I

mean, you've been in a lot of leadership roles. If you've had

to narrow it down to one thing that you feel, has helped you as

a leader, what would you isolate as the most important thing

you've personally learned and done.

There's really two and they kind of are synergy

together. The first one is communication, you have to be

able to communicate and express ideas, motivations, goals,

trends, whatever it is, you've got to be able to communicate

with your team, what's working, and not be afraid to say what's

not working, and not take things. You know, oftentimes

verbatim sit down with people talk, communicate, don't avoid

conversations. Sidenote, real quick story, the same manager

that I was telling you about earlier, who threw me under the

bus and took credit. He had this very interesting mechanism to

talk to me. We literally sat in glass offices that were next to

each other, and you could see each other. And yet, I would

often get a message from him saying, are you there? Like, can

we talk, I would turn out to be like, we just look over a course

I'm here, it demonstrated an example of somebody who just

didn't want to communicate, who was afraid of communicating who

was afraid of conflict, you've got to put that aside, you have

to have communication. And and I think the second part is, is

once you've established communication, and you've

established what your goals and ideas and trends and things are,

it introduces a level of trust. And that trust is critical

because you have to be able to trust your team to go off and

execute. You can't micromanage. You can't sit there and watch

over their shoulder with everything they're doing. You

can't ask them to turn in things for you to review. You can't do

that. So you've got to be able to trust that they're going to

deliver. And that trust again comes from building a

relationship through communication and ensuring that

they understand and recognize what the goals of the

organization are. If you can do both of those things, then

you're going to be successful.

I love it. I know I said that was the last

question. But there's some something else that tickled my

brain as you're talking about a book you recently read outside

of your own. What are you reading right now that's

influential for you?

The one that I just picked up and have has had been

reading it again for the second or third time is drastic Park,

believe it or not, what's fabulous about this, I was I was

reading through the opening of Jurassic Park, and it talks

about bio engineering. And it goes into great detail about

bioengineering and it being the, you know, the science of today.

And if you actually go and pick up a copy, or maybe you can find

the opening somewhere or audio book of Jurassic Park, listen to

it, read it, and replace everything that it talks about

from bioengineering perspective, with artificial intelligence, it

literally is the same. It was crazy to me listening to this on

both audiobooks. And again, I picked it up, and I was reading

this passage, and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, you could just replace

this with artificial intelligence. And it's the exact

same thing in terms of how companies are competing with

each other for dominance in this space and how it's

revolutionizing the way businesses. It's really fascinating.

you know, we talk about business books a lot. But

you know, one of the things I appreciate about science fiction

from a variety of standpoints, is that I mean, that's where so

much of this stuff is created, write it in the shape of an idea

in someone's mind. And then some engineers decided to make it

reality. I'm going back to your Isaac Asimov stuff and saying

concept, you're like, holy smokes. This is a long time ago

that he wrote these books.

Yeah, how much in Star Trek do we have today? You

know, the flip phone, you know, the communicator with, you know,

I mean, I'm sure people are out there trying to build

teleporters. But I mean, a lot of what Star Trek was about was

inspirational that has turned into technologies today.

100% true. Well, thank you, Chris, for your time

and attention. And if folks want to find out a little bit more

about your, what you are doing now, and what you're sharing

with the world, where are they going to find that?

The best place to get in touch with me. And to

find out everything that I'm working on is my website, Chris

hood.com. There, you can find my social media profiles, you can

find my own podcast, you can find my blog and articles that

I'm writing. And you can find a copy of my book, customer

transformation. And if you want, you can buy it on my website,

and I'll even sign it for you.

That's awesome. And a fantasy adventure novel

that's coming up?

Yeah, yeah, I'm working actively on getting a

fantasy adventure novel produced. It's already written.

It's already been edited, but going through some of the final

stages to get it out and published.

Well, you can send the galley copy right over here.

Thanks, Chris. Appreciate your time today.

Absolutely. Appreciate it so much.