Gary Tubridy: Gary Tubridy here, principal of Alexander Group. And we’re at the Executive Forum and our keynote speaker will be talking about navigating the next. And this is Peter Blacker, EVP, Streaming & Data Products & Head of DEI Advertising & Partnerships at NBCUniversal. Peter, welcome. Great to have you here.
Peter Blacker: Great to be here.
Gary Tubridy: Tell me about your position. It combines products and ad sales and DEI, so there’s a lot going on there.
Peter Blacker: It is. It is a lot. It’s a mixture of a bunch of different things, which, interestingly enough, really work hand in glove together. I have been inside NBCUniversal for, gosh, almost 18 years. And because I came up through the Telemundo brand and had worked mostly in Spanish language media, I always have had a passion for working with all things related to the Hispanic market and I worked with the black market as well as the LGBTQ+ market. And so the DEI-ness of it was always something that I loved doing, but I was originally brought into this group to focus on streaming and data products. And so when I had the opportunity, I was offered the opportunity to actually do both, it was something I greatly embraced, but also felt that I could really do some fantastic things, sort of cross-pollinating, two worlds that I was passionate about streaming and data, and diversity.
Gary Tubridy: Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Tell me about the title of this session, Navigating the Next. I love the choice of words. “Next” implies around the corner and “navigating” implies complications in getting there. Tell me about the choice of language.
Peter Blacker: As I was thinking about what was going to share in this awesome event today, I thought about my own career and some of the lessons I’ve learned, some of the rocks that I’ve narrowly avoided. And so navigation came to mind. And when I started to research a little bit, I was like, okay, so navigation, it’s a 16th-century word from nave and gateway, which is steering a boat. And the more I read about different definitions is about getting to a location safely, avoiding collision, conserving fuel, and so I was like, oh my God, this sounds like today’s world. We’re dealing with the ups and downs, and how are you going to navigate through all this? So it sounded like a great title.
Gary Tubridy: So any examples you might provide about in navigating through stormy seas that an unforeseen event has presented risks and opportunities, and you got to round the risks and you leverage the opportunities. Any example that you might point to?
Peter Blacker: You know, what’s what’s interesting today in the session that we just had, I really tried to focus on five things that you can really do. And that’s, you know, being comfortable with being uncomfortable, that really helps. Then, you know, this idea that your sales journey is an always-on journey, which used to be something that you close a deal and sort of walk away and come back. The fact that this idea of what is premium is now something that is actually defined by your clients and partners, then follow that up with the fact that empathy and empathetic communication are really key. And that led finally to my fifth point, which is around diversity and the importance of diverse voices. Those five things were really critical I think to be able to navigate through and ideally get to the other side safely and happily.
Gary Tubridy: So when you navigate around these things, you’ve got risk and you’ve got turmoil. Tell me about an example of where something came up that you managed around it and good things happened.
Peter Blacker: Oh, wow. We’ve had a few interesting things, particularly on the streaming side where, where we’ve launched certain projects or products that we thought were going to do really well. And they suddenly didn’t. And we thought to ourselves, do we take it off of our service? What do we do? And, and in some cases it’s been waiting a little bit and relaunching things. We have a big portfolio across NBCUniversal, so sometimes something may not get discovered on a streaming platform, but if we put it on one of our cable networks or put it in a broadcast network or relaunch with one of our local stations, all of a sudden it gets a little bit of fandom, and then we put it back on. All of a sudden it becomes the greatest thing ever. So I probably would say it’s been: how do we leverage a portfolio to make sure that something that maybe might not be an immediate success gets multiple shots?
Gary Tubridy: And portfolio in NBCUniversal and other companies, frankly, hasn’t been something you were able to leverage in the past because we didn’t talk to one another.
Peter Blacker: No, no. And that’s been really interesting. I mean, one of the things that I’ve been most impressed with is how this environment, this intense, full-of-change environment, has been a forcing mechanism for us to sort of all lean in and realize we need to work closer together. So we did a big campaign this past year for the U.S. Army around Veterans Day. And so my DEI hat, but also my streaming hat. And for the first time ever, we used our theme parks to actually be able to be part of that campaign. So we used our traditional media channels, we used our shows, our programs, our live events, but then we were able to be in the theme parks and be able to do a salute to the veteran salute to our troops in ways that were just fantastic. But we never worked together.
Gary Tubridy: You know, there’s there’s probably some great story there about how in navigating through challenging times, we’re stronger when we pull together as a team than when we try to face off against this separately. Better resources, better thinking, more resilience.
Peter Blacker: Completely. And I think I think that ties back to some of the stuff we were talking about earlier around a mixture of that diversity, the diverse voices, hearing other people and then the empathy, hearing other people’s perspectives. Because I may not see a big giant iceberg ahead, but someone else might see it, and I might consider the iceberg to be something that we’re going to have to turn around. And someone else might say, actually, I’ve seen this iceberg before. If you go right and then left, you’re going to get around it without a problem.
Gary Tubridy: Yeah. You know, it brings up this subject of being uncomfortable, being comfortable in uncomfortable situations. It’s a phrase that I love, and I want to explore that a little bit because we are in uncomfortable times. And I think there are a lot of people who used to be fairly comfortable in their jobs not too long ago, and looking at how things are today, there’s a lot of discomfort out there and people are going to have to get used to that. Yes. How do you get people used to being comfortable and uncomfortable situations?
Peter Blacker: I think it comes down to humanizing everything we’re going through. One of the things that I’ve been really focused on in my role at work, which is part of my DEI role and my streaming role is creating these safe spaces, these coffee chats, things where people can actually lean in and share what’s making them uncomfortable. It could be a business thing like, oh my God, I’m so stressed. It could be, I’m really nervous about what’s happening in the world of world events. And so I think that the more that we can humanize situations and not pretend like everything’s fine, you know, keep calm and carry on like that. All due respect for that wonderful mantra, I don’t think it’s really appropriate for today’s world. And it certainly I don’t think brings out the best in everybody.
Gary Tubridy: Yeah, it’s biting off just one piece at a time. Let’s have that conversation. And uncomfortable conversations can lead to more comfort by the end of them. Can’t they?
Peter Blacker: I think being in uncomfortable situations also they’re bonding. You think about if you’ve ever been on anything a boat, a plane, it’s gone through turbulence or rockiness, you get out the other side like, oh my God, do you remember what that was like? That was crazy. And I think, you know, there’s a certain level of bonding as we navigate it together.
Gary Tubridy: Yeah. Let’s talk about sellers for a second because they in all industries, particularly in yours, they have to find what matters most to clients. We can’t take for granted what the client is after. Is this a matter of getting sellers more training, hiring different kinds of sellers, giving them more data with which to make decisions about what their clients want? How do we get them in a position to understand better what their clients want?
Peter Blacker: I think first and foremost, we need to get them out of their desks and into spending more time with their clients. I think that a lot of deals have been done in the past, and many industries based on prior relationships, on industry setups that don’t exist anymore. And if you’re going to sell to somebody something, it’s really understanding all the elements. So for example, we have a bunch of flowers here. You know, I don’t understand what it took to make that bouquet. And if I’m going to try to, you know, transact with the people that made this, I should be spending time to understand which flowers are going to die sooner, which flowers are easier to get, which flowers actually are difficult to handle. And that level of really getting into the muck of it all, I think is what’s going to make the difference between good sales executives and those that just sort of, you know, are not going to cut it.
Gary Tubridy: When we talk about selling in today’s environment, there are non-linear journeys associated with reaching the deal; lefts and rights and holding patterns. How do you start to manage a seller in an environment that is so discontinuous where processes can change and results may not be guaranteed?
Peter Blacker: Well, I think that there are two sides to this. On the one hand, we have a fiduciary responsibility to hit certain numbers as any revenue-producing team at the close of a year or whatever month that is that you close out your year. But beyond that, we need to work with our teams to set other goals, other timelines, that are not as traditional because it will create a sense of victory progress in areas that are not as finite as as just the close of a calendar year. I think we have to be a lot more flexible and understanding that people want to feel that they can achieve something, and sometimes that achievement is a shorter-term win that then you sum up and becomes a giant victory.
Gary Tubridy: Well, let’s switch to the diversity topic, and you were very articulate in your keynote where, you said, you know, there’s a politicization that goes on with the subject of diversity, and let’s push that to the side. Let’s just talk about it as a business concept because if you have more diverse opinions, you have more diverse people in your business, and you’re going to have access to markets you do not have access to now. And that sounds like a pretty attractive proposition. Tell me more about that.
Peter Blacker: Well, you know, it starts with just understanding the population of the US. If we just focus on the US market for a moment and realize that the multicultural, basically the growth engine of every business in this country is multicultural. So if you are not having diverse voices that reflect those communities, you just will not have access to that business. And so whether you are selling insurance or selling pizzas or selling cars, you need to really understand who is that consumer. And you’re not going to understand that consumer if we are just talking in our own echo chamber. It’s something that is proven out time and again. We’ve done a number of different deals, one of them more recently highlighted with, um, with Group Black. We’ve done a lot of stuff with Telemundo. We really reach into these communities and unearth new ways for us to grow our business.
Gary Tubridy: For companies that are in the challenging economy that we’re in and will likely be in, some of them are talking about putting the pause button on their diversity efforts. So how would you advise them to think about that?
Peter Blacker: I think again, it’s about separating what maybe might be something that is either political in nature or more, a news story, and really focus on where is the growth of your business going to come. And again, whether you’re selling plane tickets or something else like the growth of – I’ll give you a great example. We just had a movie open a few weeks ago. And it was, you know, something where, you know, our movies in general tend to over index with multicultural audiences. We’ve had now multiple movies where the movie has 30 or 40% of the audience buying tickets are Hispanic. And you’re saying, okay, but the Hispanic population is not that big. Well, they’re buying more tickets. So you’re going, okay, this is a sector where am I really going to cut my Hispanic marketing budget, even though it looks like it should be easy to do even though it’s over indexing in the ticket sales? Those type of decisions start to come into play and you start to look and say, I can’t afford to cut this stuff.
Gary Tubridy: Doesn’t sound like a good idea. Peter, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you.
Peter Blacker: It’s really fantastic. I’ve really enjoyed the whole experience. Thank you. Great.
