Running a media company in a tech-driven landscape - Dale Nottingham,CEO, Afflatus Media Group (AMG)

Good morning Vietnam welcome to another episode of Vietnam innovators I'm your host how thank you for tuning in week in and week out uh for those of you Tuning In For the First Time Vietnam innovators is a podcast dedicated to sharing about the future of Vietnam and all things related to its growth uh the business and the people making it all happen uh so one of those guests that's making it happen for the past 10 15 years I forget how long DL has been here is my good friend Dale Nottingham uh he worked in media before in publishing as well at ringer and also at Forbes Vietnam uh but more recently he started his own media agency called alatus afflatus Media Group of which he's the founder and CEO so we're here to learn about his uh history and his experience being part of uh the larger media groups here in Vietnam and also what he's doing next and hopefully innovating as well if not disruptive if not disruptive there we go [Music] um Dale welcome to the studio thank you you know this has been a long time coming honestly um I always like to invite uh people that I catch over uh coffee chats uh frequently and we've done many of those uh as as you know and today um you know it's a good kind of transition given what you're working on now uh and to reflect on what you've done in the past so Dale give me your 60 seconds uh introduction and elevator pitch about uh what you're working on today so thanks great to be here thank you for having me so a flatus media which we will now forever refer to as AMG because when it's in Greek nobody knows what it means how to say it including you so unfortunately um so AMG afflatus Media Group so it was born out of an idea MH to learn from my mistakes and create create an opportunity where I could stay in Vietnam for reasons which we can discuss I think the mistakes or the learnings I'd say I made having worked for ringier which is a big Swiss Media company we published the biggest wedding portal the big uh the L the fashion magazine the fashion media the biggest parenting portal mar.com and we had a kitchenista portal as well and a real estate so L we published under license and then subsequently I went to run Forbes um which is also a licensed media publication and I learned that whilst there is a certain Glamour and some advantages of operating a licensed media operation there are also notable disadvantages as a local as the as the lensee number one you never own the Brand number two at the end of the contract you walk away with simply the cash you make you don't walk away with any product any Legacy so unlike yourself of course which obviously uh you've gone down a very different path and you've created your own collateral your own brand your own legacy so when I decided I wanted to stay in Vietnam after Forbes I thought I would esue for now the licensed publishing model and I would build something that I could create Equity within the company not just cash flow so I decided to to launch a company that comprise three different parts effectively both in terms of priority and also chronology so the first part of a flous media is going to be utilizing all of the network that I created over the years the contacts hopefully some learnings across content creation design sales event management all of the aspects of a publishing operation but then mobilize that knowledge that Network and put it to work for clients as an agency if you're like a a Content marketing or uh creative agency and the second part really came from this learning and at the same time I need to build something MH not just service so the first part will give me cash flow we'll develop the network of competence and resource but then I've got to put this to work for something inside of flatus so uh we'll be building a number of small Brands manyi Brands um to begin with some event Brands one very highend one very very democratized accessible at a lower end but after the first one or two years we would have invested in these Brands they will mean something they'll be worth something um so uh building Equity within the company and then the third part would be the you know the publishing the Glamorous you know the license publishing deal so maybe who knows one day Vogue Fortune Forbes tatler we don't know but if one of those Brands comes to Vietnam which they will we'll be in a good position with the experience we have and obviously the resource we will have built up and the solid foundation for the business to manage these Brands um as part but not as the core of that se operation so this is the plan the dream I'm not quite sure of the vision but the the dream for a flatus we've just starting out we're literally 8 weeks old so I'm the oldest youngest media company in Vietnam probably um we started our first business already so we're and running um fingers crossed should be a good ride that was so well articulated well thank you D thank you actually I really just enjoyed hearing you put the framework around what you're trying to do and for the audience listening in uh I've also decided to invite Dale today on the podcast because of what he said at the beginning which is that he learned from his mistakes and his learnings and I find that very refreshing uh because uh not only in the objective of running a better business but you know that you've made mistakes and I think a lot of new Founders and a lot of new businesses they tend to respond negatively about starting businesses I just had a discussion about this yesterday kind of like they had like some sort of Revenge wanting to do something but I think for people that know that they've made a mistake and uh either personally or you know running the business into not being successful they know what they've learned and um what they can do better next time I think that was really refreshing thank Dale and um for those of you again uh following along and just have come to be introduced to Dale I really enjoy getting coffee with you all the time which is once every few months so uh best of luck on that Journey um I want to break down today's podcast about each one because a lot of people are talking about media about content about IP especially in the context of Vietnam where a lot of that is uh potentially regulated and um you know very young population they want to know so much new information and yet you think about it in Vietnam is the only country in the world that speaks Vietnamese that's also a very interesting Niche if you think about it um so let's go one two three today deal let's structure today's podcast around that um so number one is about the service side of the business and you know a lot of uh other creative Industries uh may be content or actual creative agencies um this is always a sticking point because on the very negative connotation people see it as Outsourcing on the very positive side it's more partnership you you build with that client to be successful but you're never actually building your own little thing if that makes sense so break us down like that Spectrum tell us about how you see that business as you mentioned cash flow and resource and capability um what are what are the pros and cons of running that creative agency service business um and break it down for us about the future of that industry in general Andor in Vietnam I mean it's it's a very quickly evolving landscape M um for reasons that get discussed a lot M um on innovators I was just reading this morning about the GPT store customized Bots that will help you provide all kinds of services amongst inh house operations but uh all kinds of services to clients that need creative that need content that need uh design MH this year will be a seminal year for that pivot I think for that development and I think anyone who sits here now and can predict accurately what where we'll be in 12 months time is playing a little bit with fantasy because we really don't know how quickly it will transform the landscape so this will impact obviously our services business um and we must be alert to it ready for it embrace it but I think what gives me some Solace if you like what helps me sleep at night amidst all this turbulence which is exciting but also at the same time terrifying is that essentially what we will provide whether it's a Content solution or an event solution or um an integrated partnership helping people tell less stories for their brands their products or their companies what we will provide is essentially a still a people business and of all the partners ships that I did over the years I mean I started at the Daily Mail and the mail on Sunday back in the day even then right up to now the best Partnerships or the best deals that we ever did were the ones that were really rooted in those relationships and at the risk of sounding like a dinosaur where I put people above data I think that will still ring true in 12 months time when everything can be executed so seamlessly when AI agents will replace content moderators and algorithms I still think there will be a role to develop service not just product and I think as long as you keep that differentiated and that you know we provide a Content solution we're not providing only a product we're providing a service which is which needs empathy it needs understanding and I think experience helps to do that I'm banking on it obviously so yeah so I see some challenges for the services industry that we'll provide Media Services but I also see a lot of hope that critical thinking will still be really important that personal relationships particularly in Vietnam will still be I would have to agree with you it and what I said earlier Vietnam is the only place that speaks Vietnamese and that goes for a lot of ways of working here as well I would say and and even experience you know you've been in the market uh being a business executive here for um 10 15 years now and uh that's not easy to find and at least for my business and I bring this up because I want to have this conversation because we face this challenge but also opportunity at the same time we've been in the market for eight years so we have obviously expertise and competency but at the same time AI is changing a lot of things about content creation or services for our clients and if anything it's been uh hugely helpful for us because I think why people keep coming to us or to you or another agency out there in the market is because of that partnership and AI just or AI or other things in general maybe the bottom line or the Top Line um still drives the need for partnership and I think the companies that really commoditize their business actually it's this idea of I call um not only I call it but a lot of our partners call it I won't name names today but they call it premiumization uh so if you look at the general macro landscape there's so many FDI companies coming in or even new entrepreneurs in Vietnam in general like younger ones uh innovating just launching new businesses at a small or large scale and what that's done is that that's put pressure on the incumbents the Legacy incumbents maybe we're in that category right or we could be a mix of everything and uh what it's done is that it's forced everyone to innovate more and be on top of the game so for a lot of these more mass Market Vietnamese companies that have traditionally survived and thrived on the mass Market consumer they're now needing to premiumize I'm making up words right now made word a made up word um the idea that like that special you know or not even special just like that basic everyday consumer product maybe you need to change the packaging maybe you need to change something in the manufacturing process which makes it last one week longer on the Shelf these all these little things help towards making it a more compelling product and I think even in the services industry you have to think about that uh from a Services point of view that indefensible characteristic maybe it be relationship maybe service like I always constantly tell my team and I given them a very difficult time to like don't treat your clients like desk props you know yes there's many more that you can always pick up later another client there's always someone needing help or your solution but it's better just to keep the ones that you have but you you have to keep innovating too if you get lazy you slack off somebody will eat your lunch may be another agency or AI for instance um so anyways I just wanted to share that little TI No it's a really interesting point and you mentioned about in the media in the business you know Legacy MH because it was it was a while ago now that we were talking about the Legacy Media companies and this was all about the transition from print to digital this was a you know uh back in the day and now we We've Come Around again and we now have multi- Channel multiplatform fully integrated differentiated media Brands but now they've become the Legacy and whether that they're reminded of this by the influx of fresh ideas fresh money fresh investment but they now need to innovate just as their predecessors needed to innovate back into stone age and The Innovation now is much more about personalization it's customization so we'll see this play out as you say mass is losing its place at the table MH everything you can scale now through customization through scalable Solutions with machine learning and AI it can Big Data you can generate massive Insight very individualized and customized output aggreg aggregated and this is I think fantastic and I think the ones who rise to that challenge and embrace the technology that will deliver that will obviously be the winners mhm but it also brings dangers and this goes beyond sort of my job or my role and that's about truth mhm and I think personalization which started with social media algorithm serving you like-minded opinions creating tribes Echo Chambers and this is all fantastic because it validates your views and it builds a community with whom you identify readily but the danger of this is that you are never exposed to contrary views you never challenged in these opinions because that's not good business for selling ads and for building um addiction right to social media channels we become if you like the victim of this desire for personalization and now you know the cliche of post truth society that we live in is manufactured by this process so and I I you know read I'm reading today about open AI signing license deals with CNN and fox but then the times suing them well the New York Times is suing them so they're kind of taking the the exactly you know they're drawing their Line in the Sand taking the opposite view and say okay we will not train your Bots mhm we will keep our content sacran but they are a lone voice more or less there are other companies doing you know doing Financial deals with open a what would you do if they offered you a decent Financial deal whatever that might be well I'm I'm no expert I mean I would defer to you on this but just as a a Layman I would say the companies the media brands that did the fan packed a while back when they distributed their content on social media in order to gain free traffic to build numbers but then we're at the mercy of the policies of the social media of the tech Giants so change an algorithm or remove news from your feed you know to revert to the family and friends model you're powerless suddenly you've lost all your distribution You've Lost Your leverage and You' got no traffic on your website anymore so you you've been completely emasculated because you gave control to someone else and a lot of the big media companies they learned very hard lessons and now maybe it's tempting to think okay well did they learn anything at all MH because CNN are going to license their content out to open AI which will eventually take over hijack that and where does that leave CNN m in a few years time so I don't know if they're making the same mistake all over again but then I don't know if the New York Times is you know King Cano pushing the waves back M cu the momentum will be so great and and even a brand as strong and as solid and as well respected as the New York Times it cannot stand alone in this fight so it'll be fascinating to see where it goes in my heart I'm New York Times of course well you know me me too actually but at the same time I love AI Innovation just what it's doing and um you know ignoring the possible implications in the future it's it's just fascinating to watch it's like you know human evolution at its best but but anyways um thank you for sharing that little tidbit uh Dale um let's put Services aside first that's the first pillar you mentioned and I you know we could really deep dive further into that but you know to summarize I think our mutual understanding there is is really driven on this idea that Services needs to be more than just a commodity and it's that's going back years as well not just today and moving ahead but it has to be relationship and partnership focused because at the end of the day there there's always a solution that's needed on that pillar of a business and media um or creative work so moving to the second one which is you're basically looking to build your own Equity build your own franchises um because from your mistakes learnings you've you've learned that while there's benefits of essentially renting a house maybe you like to own one and um real estate's always another discussion and we can save that for another day but in media um I'd like to Deep dive into this cuz obviously my perspective is I've never done a licensed business I've only done uh owned Equity content platforms um let's talk about what kind of platforms you're looking to build and how how that would be monetized looking ahead is it through the more sponsorship approach is it through user-based Revenue um I we talked offline about it being like a Content but also offline event play what does that look like for AMG well in the first instance in the first phase of development in my very finite wisdom just decided that I would choose projects that were measurable um executable on a reasonably finite time bound basis not forever lasting with eventually some payout you know in years to come so I decided to to start with the event side of the business rather than say the content side and I look at the Vietnam landscape and I see certain behaviors with regard to people attending events people sponsoring events the kind of things that have been done and not done or and why haven't they been done and I ask myself this question so give you a couple of examples so we plan to do four events the build four event Brands one of them will be at this absolutely the top end so to fly a genuine Global celebrity that has resonance with a certain segment so they may have resonance with high net worth individuals or it could be more your audience so you have to select this celebrity they could come from business they could come from entertainment they could be arts and culture it doesn't matter and we will bring them here and we will host a dinner but this is all about scarcity it's all about Prestige and exclusivity because it I think it's true not a lot of global celebrities come here you have Maroon 5 and black pink and a couple of others and Ariana Ariana Grande comes and gets a sore throat but it's not on the circuit for entertainment they Bangkok Singapore and they're back home similarly unless they are active politicians they tend not to come here MH Arnold Schwarz Niger has just written a book so yeah we we may try to get him out here at some point obviously there's a certain audience that knows him and then we're just assemble some high net worth individuals that will pay a fortune to come and have that experience so the the celebrity will be a great speaker they'll be a great entertainer of sorts not necessarily a nice person we you know we we thinking about Boris Johnson the other day really well everyone looks at me like are you serious and I'm saying yeah but that aside you know he is a great speaker and Entertainer so there'll be no agenda for them you know they don't come to talk about something but to create this event this moment in Vietnam I think it would be fun I think it would be great for the country I think it would be great for the for the experience obviously lots of earned media and it will be a buzz and I kind of got this idea when just before I left Forbes I worked with the New Zealand consulate M and we had this idea to bring jinda ardern to Vietnam right cuz it was for the Women's Summit and the women's summit's all about celebrating women empowerment showcasing Role Models giving women inspiration hope and there is internationally there was no greater example of this than jind done you don't get to have a woman uh New Zealand prime minister great iconic im images of her breastfeeding a baby in the Parliament and just standing up um and being a great compassionate leader so I said to to Joe Nelson we should do this and he said okay so everyone said you're crazy you can't do this you'll never come blah blah blah but we said okay we try maybe we fail I failed many times it won't be a you know a surprise so let's try and then it was a lot of work because as a sitting prime minister of course she needs to be invited by by the New Zealand by the Vietnamese government all the protocols the security and it was a honestly quite painful process but she came I mean this is my parting gesture before this is my leaving gift she came and uh again there was just a huge Buzz not just around the Forbes event but just around yeah you know Vietnam and it was amazing and people they they flocked to that conference they listened to her message of Hope and inspiration and I thought wow this is something really possible and we if we can bring a sitting prime minister to speak at like a private company's conference and we can get anybody yeah with enough energy optimism obviously resource I think that if we if we can dream it then we should Chase it and if we fail we fail but so this is one of the examples and I want to build this concept because I don't think anyone's doing it yet vit should probably do it next week well I you know i' looked into this business and um I I I'm it's very appealing not just commercially but just in terms of the buzz and all that but I have struggled to see how it's I guess you can say recurring and because it's not because once you get one celebrity to come over it's very unlikely they'll come again um or if they did um what's that story we're trying to tell what's that value and I think you mention experiences um we really think about um how to make experiences repeatable how to be something to look forward to it's not like one and done um that's a IDM in English for those you that don't know uh but the idea that okay you you do that event and then they can look forward to the next year so you're building IP a franchise where it's kind of like it's not like thank you goodbye uh but it's it's a story that you can continue telling and we have a couple examples of that of vetro which I'll share just very briefly um one of our friends who I've known for seven eight years his name is Chris doe he's a creative agency leader and about a decade ago I I believe he started a online education platform called the future which has now become one of the largest in the world and he creates a lot of content on YouTube and all that too very successful entrepreneur and he's Vietnamese American he's 51 years old now and he just came back to Vietnam last week for the first time in 48 years and I've been asking him to come out here he is still a couple family out here and um upon his last day here after a couple weeks he was like wow I can't believe I didn't come sooner I'll be back for sure and he had all these business ideas that he wanted to talk with me after and so kind of sharing and we didn't pay for him to come here by the way it was all Leisure but we did have a partnership um he did come on have a sip we invited him on the podcast that we have with twe in and then he also did a workshop with us for 30 packs which we charged $600 for and the kind of people coming for it were genuinely not only interested in him but what he had to offer in terms of the education that experience it's obviously very rare first time and you know possibly the last time we've ever hosted a workshop with him here in Vietnam so people are looking for those experiences and even like education I actually just had this conversation yesterday where um I have a friend of mine that runs an etiquette Academy in Hanoi of all places and the thing is very wealthy people or just people in general know that perhaps a western St style education of etiquette because Vietnamese have never really um for a long period of time gotten exposure to those levels of Western etiquette and talking like fine dining settings or like meeting politicians or business people that kind of thing like oh shake your hand and when you do do it firmly you know like whenever I meet somebody not just in Vietnam just in general who has a very weak handshake and it's in a business setting I'm kind of like oh this person's very you know soft and very kind but perhaps not the most confident you know little things like that right and I do believe there's a an experience for that cuz I think people with money they can buy that $1,000 bought of whiskey with or without you so like you know or they can go to that dinner with or without you especially if it's here but what what is something like an experience that you can offer and you know for you mention a couple names and you know what I do that sure I think depending on the setting uh but another thing is like what learning what takeaway can they take and is it's something they can repeat that's something I think about a lot yeah no it's interesting I think because it makes sense to have something that you can replicate and repeat otherwise it's an awful big investment aw big investment just for a one-off which is still fine but it's not necessarily the best way to build your business I think generally speaking the hook that you then repeat generally speaking it would be thematic so they speak on you know there is a subject right and you can bring exponents or experts really at to the subject and you can have a constant sausage refractory of those experts coming and giving you slightly different insights around Innovation or AI or women empowerment or whatever so more often than not it's the subject that drives if you like the longevity and provides you with the kind of the scope for repetition with the with the example I gave you of course there is no theme so the question is okay well how do you repeat that and I think this is your question but I think it it comes back to what you just said about the experience so if you imagin that you're a member of this club let's call it Supper Club mhm as a working title and the first time we do one okay you let's say I get Michelle Obama so Michelle Obama agrees to come to Vietnam and have a a private dinner with 40 high paying highly paid High net worth individuals and these people will come most probably because it's Michelle Obama because they don't know me they don't know AMG Supper Club is a new idea and then we will get maybe another in the second year and by the time it gets to the second the third year and I think you must have experience this with some of your Brands as well the content becomes slightly less important than the experience or the community MH so the idea is the hook in the begin beginning will be this the hook is all the celebrity like you said these people at the highest end they've done everything they can afford everything they're not going to be impressed by the best chef the best dinner the best restaurant even yours yeah they need something unique not bigger not better different mhm this is the this is the differentiator so you bring a celebrity that has a unique Identity or unique residance at that moment and then next year you'll bring someone else that will have equal resonance completely different it doesn't matter the content doesn't matter the restaurant which of course needs to be the best anyway so I think what gives it legs what gives it levity will be the fact that they are member of this club and they will eventually think okay there's a supper club event and we will only do one or two a year this is not going to be a monthly thing because the organizational side is huge um to get them to come and they think oh there's a supper club event in October I don't even care especially CU I've been to three it's going to be amazing cuz it's going to be this person is going to be iconic they're going to be really good value and only 39 other people will be there right which in Vietnam has a certain value you know one one thing and um let's let's move on just your final comment about this uh we're obviously to foreigners who have lived here a very long time and we we like to think and probably deservedly so believe know Vietnamese culture fairly well at this point I don't want to be too overbearing but um you know one of the things I've noticed and it goes for markets like let's say Japan or China as well who have brought I'm sure th so many celebrity engagements to this particular group of you know consumers before is the whole language barrier so you know most of these things are done in English but it's we're the only country in the world that speaks Vietnamese what what what's your thought on that does that does that deter people um because there I mean of course there are some many actually Vietnamese who speak English very well including the super wealthy or just the wealthy in General but there's a segment that don't uh what are your thoughts about bridging that and is that a problem at all [Applause] [Music] or yes I mean I think you have to obviously you have to be mindful of of the the linguistic barrier depending on the different segments audiences that you bring to these you know we've worked many times with simultaneous translations and we've tried to facilitate the kind of interaction between English and V enemies it works but it doesn't work well so I think um a lot of it is in the planning so we we try to eliminate as many barriers to communication as we can either in the people we select the audiences we choose the demographics the age my experience is now that your audience for example speaks impressive English on a scale I mean it's uh the level of English amongst sort of gen EDS Millennials Vietnamese it's pretty good and I've it's never never been a problem of course at Forbes at ringier all my products were in Vietnamese we had no English products English language products so therefore all the inter the events the interactions were done across language barriers but it's never proven a difficulty and I think as we move forward now I think this is one barrier such as it exists that AI will solve yeah was about to say um we can always have an AI Voice or something like that but anyways we we'll save that for another another discussion um I just want to quickly round up this second pillar that we discussed so we obviously focused on this one particular group and I'm sure it's the Playbook is more or less replicable across different Target groups and audiences could you just quickly summarize in in possibly bullet point form as we need to move ahead uh what those other groups that you're looking at or or topics so at the the other end of the spectrum uh uh we want to do something that has social purpose it's not all about monetization and elitism so we're planning to do a series of of workshops followed by a one big one day event catering for single mths so we have some connections to a community of single moms about a quarter of a million in Vietnam okay and working with the uh we found this partner and they've been working with this community building it up through Facebook groups and just providing information education support networking a little bit hopefully some inspiration we will develop a series of of activities uh offline because I think these communities they still relish the opportunity to be in you know to actually physically connect with each other and we will do online activities to amplify and scale uh but the core of the experience will be online so this is something we will do very much at the other end it'll be free access to single moms that monetization for these kind of things to to to refer to your earlier question is is is not monetizing the users it will be monetizing through sponsorship and it'll be monetizing around the event but giving democratized access to a wide range of people that need that help and support um doing something a little bit more meaningful than just flying all shorts and N got to Vietnam you know sure I mean that's good too well thank you Dale I think that uh kind of summarizes quite well and capsules what you want to do with the second pillar of the owned Equity kind of Ip businesses and um yeah we think a lot about in the same way Etc so um let's let's see how that goes and um best of luck on that one uh Dale as well quite exciting um I want to move to the third one which I I think if I were to comment on your general business idea plan this obviously is a little bit more on the longtail side and and kind of patens the whole business as the other first two take off um is the whole license discussion so you already mentioned it before you don't really own these Brands but they can be quite powerful in terms of um leverage just branding networks and that kind of thing um you worked at L you worked at Forbes you did a lot of things uh in licensing already uh what's the future of Licensing so I want to put aside the past a little bit you've commented a little bit what's the future of Licensing for you or anyone else in Vietnam that's considering this what what what do you think is the pros and cons of this moving forward well I think as a license e when you're considering taking on one of these Partnerships and they tend to be fairly complicated layered bureaucratic in that you're are limited just as like a a franchisee of a coffee chain or a fast food chain I mean there are strict parameters Around The Branding the content you know certain freedoms are circumscribed for you to be super creative so flexibility is something that is a challenge to take on a licensed media project going back again to Li to Legacy Media thinking you know you talk to to you know the big Hurst condas lagad whatever the Publishers of these brands that we would be talking about in Vietnam and their business model is 40 years old 30 years old in some in some cases where they have their strict requirements for you must have this component this component this component this will be the royalty this will be the so all the terms and conditions were made way back so they're not being adapt yeah they're not agile they've not been adap they're not adapted to the new landscape media landscape now of course the reality has impacted them heavily you you look at kast globally in terms of the how they've suffered in terms of trying to adapt to a digitized world never mind the world we live in today um and the amount of money that they've had to invest let's say politely um to to navigate that course so I think if I'm looking at a a licensed partner a media partner now I'm looking for flexibility not just in the financial terms but also in the in the kind of products um I know we years ago even L I was talking to L about you know digital only licenses and they were open to the idea but I think there are still many others that would say no we must have the magazine we must have this this well let's talk about the opportunities so you mentioned the digital Only Solution it seems kind of like a half-baked solution if anything it's more reactive what do you think the industry could do to be proactive in terms of adapting to the times of you know franchising licensing especially in Emerging Markets aside from just format delivery is it like just Reinventing the whole like framework potentially um and what is the opportunity that lies ahead for these uh license holders uh in markets like Vietnam is it market dominance is it Network building Community Building yeah so the I think the opportunity on both sides is to reimagine what a licensed media partnership is in that you're not licensing the products you should be licensing the idea let's take an example to give it some clarity let's take Vogue as an example a successful Vogue in Vietnam would be where you the lensee sits down with the Lor and says okay let's imagine what Vogue means not in terms of its iterations and you know how it's manifested necessarily yet but it means certain ideas certain standards certain imagery certain activities if you like a certain Behavior a certain way of thinking and if you start from here and think okay how would that translate today into these audiences in the way that they would like to experience the idea so it becomes more of a Lifestyle brand than a publishing brand cuz publishing is really just one part of this idea I like what you just said about that it's like um for our this podcast Vietnam innovators podcast it's just a podcast but we we want the name to be much more that gives you a little hint about what we're doing I mean you can already guess like you know expanding that IP that you've built into other forms of format delivery so not just podcasts but could be as simple as one minute videos to documentaries to More Physical experiences like events and merchandise and that kind of thing not going to be doing merchandise or innovators but it's all of this yeah it's all and it's education you know it's getting a vog v condas has a school of design and fashion in London but it's getting uh you know studying of getting a diploma in you know photography you know with Gast or with v or it's a travel experience I mean l experimenting in Hospitality with hotels really yeah um in in Europe um so they they're kind of starting to grasp this idea that let's reimagine what it is to be L and not just say okay you read the magazine or see the website I mean this is like prehistoric thinking no that's that's really cool I like that and if you as a franchisee can have that conversation knowing your Market knowing your audience and you have free reign to say okay how can we express l or how can we express the idea of Vogue with all the creativity and kind of lateral thinking that would be such a fun thing and that's a good business strategy because everyone knows you know the magazine will live on as a symbol but no more you know monetization of web so hard and anyway not especially relevant you know and so you've got to imagine new ways to create business bus models but you got to start with a premise which is say okay let's start everything agnostic let's just start with the idea what it is to be Vogue mhm in a B2B a b Toc since whatever and then build a landscape that you think matches this place these people and then you you can start to have real real fun and build a business which can last and grow and more importantly bring down those franchising fees you know on that topic I think you've had some experience I guess in well I've checked into it it it doesn't sound feasible at the the start of it of course I think you have to have massive heavy capex investment and the return is quite lengthy so it's not really a cash flow business but the way I see Licensing in our world if we were to go down that path is really leveraging it to do other activities in parallel so if you have a bigger Media Group like yourself assuming everything number one and two are are you know operating and fully functioning number three helps to Aid each other they're all like in an ecosystem but if you don't have that ecosystem you start with just licensing it's going to be very difficult because the costs are so high and because you don't own anything the risk management is also always a a consideration so um at least that's how I look at it no it should give you learning having a licensed media operation y because obviously there's huge history and Heritage and expertise in their home markets you should access that you should as you said use that learning to build something a parallel a mirror or whatever or you should use that to access access money access influence access distribution and you should be doing all three of these things well thought out not just the content but what's the outcomes and and how can you leverage it so exactly yeah um Dale that wraps up today's podcast so um just want to say a big thanks for for this great sharing today you know I've always wanted to capture our coffee chats and and share it to the public as much as we can uh today super valuable I've learned a lot hopefully um you've learned a thing or two as well um best of luck to the AMG team thank you very much um I have one very last question keep it short I might have to interrupt you um is I always like to ask my guests you're an expert in media and related Industries what is one thing you're not an expert in that you'd like to learn more and I ask you this because we'd like to invite that guest on the show so you can listen in on the next episode could be anything doesn't have to be an exact person or company but could be an industry or topic you know I'm not I'm I'm interested and fascinated but absolutely no expert in AI like the man in the street I read generally I see I get glimpses of what's coming but then I talk to you and I realize actually I don't know very much at all and it this would be would you go to a workshop that that sure that we host with an expert yeah I mean I think that you know making things like this accessible yeah uh because in our industry we you know whether it's publishing or marketing or certainly Tech you know we get or you and this industry get so caught up in media speak and jargon and it kind of for media speak sake and you know my favorite magazine in the world the economis MH taught me the art of simplification yeah use one word you know don't use three when one word will do use a word that people understand rather than a word that only you understand and to make complex ideas accessible and simple to a 12-year-old child is the hardest skill and I think in Tech Innovation and currently with AI machine everything I think there is a tendency to to to believe that that complexity displays knowledge MH and it doesn't Simplicity displays your ability to to transform that information into an accessible format so provided I understand you're expert in your Workshop sure sign me out okay very good we'll look into that uh thank you everyone for tuning in for another episode of Vietnam innovators I hope you enjoyed today's program with Dale Nottingham founder and CEO of AMG I forgot how to pronounce the first word already but you can go back to the first minute of today's program thank you so much everyone and see you next time goodbye

2024-02-02 17:06

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