The Biggest Takeaways From Variety Executive Studio at Advertising Week (Day 1)

Variety kicked off the second year of its Executive Interview Studio, presented by Canva, during New York’s 2024 Advertising Week. Already, on day one, the studio hosted several discussions centered around technology’s transformation in today’s marketing space with the minds behind Tubi, Uber, and celebrity innovators such as actor Terry Crew and award-winning journalist Michael Strahan.

Below is a highlight of some of the biggest takeaways from the studio

Blending Hollywood Magic and Tech Innovation: Tubi CEO Discusses Creative Risks, Diverse Storytelling, and Exciting New Ventures for 2025

Tubi CEO Anjali Sud sat down with Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton to talk about the free streaming service’s latest investment strategies in marketing, production and overall application function. 

The platform’s focus when producing original content is not big-budget material but anticipated demanded internet stories, “We don’t necessarily go and try to find that next critically acclaimed show that [has] a very significantly large budget. What we try to do is listen to our fans, both on Tubi and what’s happening in culture and what’s happening in society.” That includes upcoming projects like turning the viral sensation Wattpad novel “Sidelined: The QB and Me” (aka “The QB Bad Boy and Me”) into an original film with”Dawson’s Creek” James Van Der Beek and TikTok star Noah Beck.

Sud notes that while this is Beck’s first feature, “our signals are getting better and better about what people are interested in. And for us, originals are just a way to actually just get that type of content and storytelling produced that might not already exist in Hollywood.”

Tubi’s mission to break out of the herd with free, ad-based television is their biggest challenge so far. “You’re in a kind of a sea of sameness and streaming right now. And that means you gotta take creative risks.”

e.l.f. Beauty’s Laurie Lam Reveals How AI Helped Them Integrate Their Beauty Squad Into the Gaming Platform Roblox

Laurie Lam, chief brand officer at e.l.f. Beauty, said the DNA of the e.l.f. beauty brand and its disruptive spirit have remained unchanged over the past 20 years. That attitude is exactly what helped them wrangle the epic Jennifer Coolidge Super Bowl commercial (filmed by “White Lotus” director Mike White) and landed their “Beauty Squad” inside the gaming platform Roblox.

Lam explained how her team is focused on continuously finding new audiences for their products. She detailed the importance of constantly pivoting through different approaches to meet the changing needs of consumers. The sticky spot (centered around their power grip primer or the “holy grail,” as Lam describes it) came together in just three weeks.

“It was a very sticky product,” Lam said. “It actually had gone viral on TikTok; people were using it to stick objects to their face, to see how sticky it was. There was like a litmus test, they would stick paper, toothpaste, this vase, they would also play with it in terms of its sticky tactileness. So you can argue there was a benefit that was sticky, but also there was an entertainment factor that was sticky.” The sticky sensation paired perfectly with Coolidge’s off-the-cuff remark after her Golden Globes win that she wanted to be a dolphin. E.l.f. heard this request loud and clear and set out on a mission to make her dreams come true. “We created a dolphin skin with her, we put her in a commercial, we took the stickiest product, the stickiest star, arguably coming off of ‘White Lotus.’ We took Mike White (who helped write this with us) and we produced an actual commercial.”

Everything that e.l.f. has done over the last 20 years, according to Lam, has been an evolution of who they are as both an entertainment company and a beauty company. In fact, the company just recently utilized AI to digitize their beauty squad into the Roblox gaming platform. Their e.l.f. Up World has already had 16.5 million plays.

Canva and Uber On Connecting Advertisers to Micro-Communities with Targeted Audiences

Fenot Tekle, global communications officer at Canva, and Ashan Khan, head of agency partnerships at Uber Advertising, joined the studio to discuss finding an audience as advertisers in a crowded and ever-expanding consumer landscape.

Tekle said there is often an instinct in marketing to cast “a net for everyone” to draw as many customers as possible. However, Tekle believes “if you’re casting a net for everyone, you’re really not catching anyone along the way,” and instead focuses on smaller, more targeted communities to draw traffic.

“We are leaning into niche programming and identifying these affinity groups or micro-communities to target our messages and see what resonates,” said Tekle. “We also believe that when it comes to targeting, culture lives in TikTok and social, and organic social is a big part of how we reach communities. It’s a way for us to test new messages and create new opportunities that can then translate into the press universe and be part of the larger stories that we’re telling.”

For Khan, Uber’s rideshare and food delivery services provide him with real-time data on “where people are going” and “what they are ordering,” which is invaluable information for advertisers. For example, Uber provided an average of 3000 trips to the Taylor Swift Era’s show per show. That’s 3,000 rides for just one, singular show. That kind of data certainly opens up an opportunity to find advertisers who want to work with Uber for that specific community.

“In my role, and what we’re doing in the ads business, utilizing our own data set is new for advertisers,” Khan said. “We’re able to utilize that, bring it to advertisers and help inform what they might run to reach these consumers.”

Michael Strahan and Constance Schwarz Marini On Their Company Motto, HLYB, ‘Hustle Like You’re Broke’

Co-founders Michael Strahan and Constance Morini sat down to discuss the creation of their production company SMAC Entertainment, which is short for Sports, Music, and Culture.

The award-winning journalist, host and Hall of Famer Strahan joined forces with Schwartz-Morini to create a network that can guide athletes and entertainers to become multi-hyphenated in their careers, helping people achieve their ambitions by opening the doors towards new opportunities. “Whether it’s Wiz Khalifa, who we’re working on a show with him and his son, or Erin Andrews, who is crushing life on the A team for NFL on Fox and her clothing line that we’ve partnered with her on,” said Schwartz-Morini listing their latest developments. “It’s ideas that, that are sparked. And then we just figure out how do we take it to the next level,” she continued.

Strahan also commented on their company’s motto and how the goal is to push people on their interests, “You gotta have a path to have a passion because we have a model for our company, HLYB ‘hustle like you are broke.’ And you’re not gonna hustle like you’re broke for something that you don’t care about.” 

Redefining Entertainment: How Creatives Like Terry Crews and His Team Transform Advertising into Engaging Experiences

Terry Crews, actor, co-founder and CEO of Super Serious, Matt O’Rourke, co-founder of Super Serious and Paul Sutton, managing partner and COO of Super Serious, sat in the studio to breakdown the success of their new creative agency.

Crews founded Super Serious in 2023 because he “loves entertainment period” and wanted to prove to audiences that commercials can be as entertaining as film or television. After meeting O’Rourke while working his Old Spice campaign, they realized the impact commercials can have on the cultural zeitgeist, a phenomenon Crews aims to recreate with Super Serious.

“People were watching each commercial in a row on YouTube for [almost] half an hour. And we were like, ‘Wow.’ It changed the game in so many ways,” Crews said. “We realized entertainment, whether it’s a two-hour movie, a half-hour television show, or a 32-second commercial, has to be entertaining.”

O’Rourke added that the word “advertising is very limiting” and boxes the marketing space into a tired definition. His goal with Super Serious is to change how people see ads so they don’t “interrupt” the viewing experience.

“When you entertain people, they love you for it,” said O’Rouke. “We can talk about movies and shows and things that we consume in our lives, things we haven’t watched for 20, 30 years, but we still can recite lines from because we know them because we love them. That’s really what we wanna do. That’s when we say we’re in entertainment.”

Mastercard’s Nicola Grant on Generation Z’s Spending Behaviors

Nicola Grant, senior vice president of global brand strategy and innovation at Mastercard, said the company has developed a culture of innovation and cited increased testing and learning across teams as a result.

“When you look at the technology landscape, when you look at how culture is evolving, staying ahead of that and being relevant is more challenging,” Grant said. “It’s both moving with technology, and there’s an added element which is accessibility.”

She detailed the removal of the word “Mastercard” to become a symbol-only brand as a pivotal strategic move for the company. Grant explained that added exposure to the logo and the implementation of brighter, richer colors was central to this motivation. Grant said developing a sonic system was a second significant move and that launching the Haptic brand has now brought Mastercard into the tactile space.

“One of the interesting challenges is maintaining and growing and building trust,” Grant said. “At the same time, on the opposite side, really pushing on innovation and the fun…those two working together is an interesting challenge.” 

As for Generation Z, “You gotta meet them where they are. They’re highly influential, and their approach to life, to the consumption of content, is very, very different,” Grant said. “This generation is really driving a big change in the way we go to market in the communication channels we use and the partnerships that we have.”

What does that mean, an emphasis on passion and experience. “We focus on passions. We segment based on passion,” says Grant. “Whether it’s sports or culinary or music, we have all of our sponsorship properties that then allow us to reach people through the things that they’re really passionate about.”