When Jae Goodman stepped down as CEO of creative ad agency Observatory last summer, he didn’t know what his next chapter would be.
He had spent the previous 16 years building a portfolio of award-winning work predicated on the thesis that brand entertainment could have a significant impact in modern culture by attracting and engaging audiences—rather than be interrupting and annoying—while also driving business results for brands. Last year felt like a culmination of his work to that point. In June alone, Apple TV+ announced a multiyear sports film deal with Nike’s Waffle Iron Entertainment, which Observatory built and led within Nike. Waffle Iron Entertainment also launched its first podcast, Hustle Rule, based on the best-selling book by Gwendolyn Oxenham. Wine brand client 19 Crimes released a limited-edition Martha Stewart action figure to promote their collaboration, which inspired an unpaid eight-minute segment on Today With Hoda & Jenna. Doritos hosted a Stranger Things-branded online concert featuring Soft Cell, The Go-Go’s, and Charli XCX.
It all got Goodman thinking about how he could continue to drive his thesis forward. “The hard answer to that,” he told me at the time, “is the only way I’ll know if there is a different platform to do that is to step away.”
Now he’s got the answer. This week, Goodman and cofounder John Kaplan are publicly announcing the launch of Superconnector Studios. With offices in Nashville and Los Angeles, their new startup is not an agency, nor is it a production company. Rather it’s a strategic business consultancy that aims to connect all the stakeholders in brand entertainment: brands and agencies, talent and studios, media companies, and anyone else participating in the production of content at this nexus.
“I think the real goal for Superconnector Studios is about making content that both attracts and engages a part of the overall business strategy for everyone from the largest companies in the world to startups,” says Goodman, “by really leveraging the experience, expertise, and [industry] connections that we’ve developed over 20 years at the intersection of advertising and entertainment.”
Superconnector’s approach to brand content won’t be new to anyone familiar with Observatory over the past decade. However, by freeing that approach from the shackles of a traditional agency role, and trading in that compensation model for one built on the incentive of a given project’s financial success, it resets the landscape for the entire category.
A business of connecting dots
Goodman and Kaplan met in 2006 while working at the talent agency CAA, and both have created global and award-winning brand work for such companies as Nike, Netflix, Diageo, AB InBev, General Motors, Microsoft, Chipotle, Coca-Cola, Revlon, and Unilever, to name a few.
“We both were getting phone calls from talent, artists, athletes, CMOs, studios, all asking for us to help them on very specific, unique things,” says Kaplan. “That made us think, maybe what we really are is a conduit to connect the dots for all of these entities. And if we do what we do well, we’ll help connect a lot of people and the marketplace overall will rise.”
They decided to build Superconnector’s business on three pillars: management consultancy, brand entertainment, and talent-accelerated consumer products. SpringHill Company CEO Maverick Carter immediately saw the value in what Goodman and Kaplan’s new company brings to the table. “When Jae pitched us Superconnector Studios, my response was, ‘You’ve built a business that perfectly leverages everything you’ve been working toward your entire career,” says Carter. “SpringHill and Uninterrupted are already pursuing several initiatives with the brands they represent.”
Creating advertising that makes money
The management consultancy is based on the company’s ability to advise brands on how they can create premium content and actually turn it into a business or revenue generator, or at least something that gets broader distribution without having to pay for it. In addition, they’re talking to distributors, studios, producers, and talent about the role they can play in these types of partnerships.
So far, the company is already working with Sony Pictures Television to draft a brand partnership strategy applicable to its hundreds of TV productions, developed the framework for Major League Baseball’s premium content strategy, helped Chipotle seek and find new creative agency partners, and is working with financial services giant TIAA and its lead agency, The Martin Agency, to build out premium content and partnerships that transcend advertising.
TIAA chief marketing officer Micky Onvural says Superconnector is a distinct complement to its agency partners. “I’ve partnered with many agencies across my career, and most of them are very good, but there’s a unique perspective [SuperConnector] brings, along with the ability to go from the business challenge to create an idea that brings together the brand and brand strategy in a way that I haven’t seen before.”
Kristen Cavallo, CEO of The Martin Agency and Global CEO of MullenLowe Group, says Superconnector brings insights around entertainment-like content creation and high-level entertainment partnerships, as well as unparalleled Hollywood relationships. “It’s a complementary relationship,” she says, “and I suspect you’ll see us collaborating on more brand clients soon.”
Every brand can be a Hollywood studio
In brand entertainment, the company is already at work with AB InBev, in a project similar to Nike’s Waffle Iron Entertainment, developing the brewer’s in-house entertainment arm Draftline Entertainment. They’ve also been working with Gibson guitars, leveraging that brand’s rich YouTube content to negotiate distribution across other broadcast media.
Superconnector will also develop one-off projects such as brand-produced documentaries, films, podcasts, and television series. But rather than a traditional agency fee, it will be compensated as a producer and participate in production revenue and sales to distributors.
Proprietary matching of the right talent to the best brand
The third pillar of the company is its Talent-Accelerated Consumer Products division, to help facilitate business partnerships between talent and entertainment, like the partnership between 19 Crimes Wine and Snoop Dogg that Goodman helped promote while at Observatory. Goodman says that the relationships between brands and celebrity ambassadors is quickly evolving, with talent looking for more in-depth involvement.
“I didn’t invent this, and I know there are other people and companies doing it, but nobody’s been operating at the intersection of brands and talent longer nor has better relationships on both sides,” says Goodman. “So, I just think I’m capable of moving to good partnerships more efficiently and effectively than anyone in the world.”
Superconnector has built a proprietary method for assessing matches between brands and talent, and a range of business approaches that align the interests of each. While not ready to announce anything publicly just yet, Goodman says the company is currently working on partnerships between several well-known brands and mega-star talent, not only in product categories like alcohol, where these deals are most common, but also branching the concept out to major global CPG companies. Similar to its role in brand entertainment, Superconnector doesn’t have up-front service fees like an agency, but will be compensated through a revenue partnership once products hit store shelves.
Kaplan says that it’s not only the best time in their careers for a venture like Superconnector, but that it’s also the right moment in brand marketing and entertainment. These two industries and how they interact and evolve are in flux, with streamers looking at advertising again and celebrities using social as their own media networks while looking for new ways to work with brands.
“It’s one thing to have a good idea,” says Kaplan. “It’s another thing to know how to get it done. For better or worse, we’ve lived in this hybrid world for so long, and we’ve done so many different projects at a high level, we have the experience of being able to navigate these worlds, as more people are looking to do [brand entertainment] more than ever.”
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